Iran Unveils First Hypersonic Missile | 6 Swing States Will Decide the Future of Geopolitics | Poland Is Not Ready to Accept a New McCarthyism, and more

current Polish government’s effort to return the country to autocracy.
The bottom-line message from Law and Justice is that most Polish voters should stay home, even if they worry that Poland is currently governed by autocratic xenophobes, because the only alternative is an opposition that will sell Poland out to the Russians—and that derives from a political lineage that has been doing so since the 1980s. What once was a fringe position on the right is now mainstream in Poland. Parliamentary elections are coming up this fall, and Law and Justice fears a loss, so it is making full use of antidemocratic tactics honed over eight years in government: subordinating the judiciary to elected politicians, turning public media into government-propaganda outlets, and fomenting culture wars.

South Korea Declares Nuclear Alliance with U.S. to Deter Kim Jong-un  (Gavin Blair, The Times)
South Korea has announced a nuclear alliance with the United States to counter the rising threat of a first strike by Kim Jong-un.
President Yoon said the danger posed by Pyongyang meant that Seoul was now under the protective umbrella of Washington’s nuclear deterrent. “North Korea is enhancing its nuclear and missile capabilities, and has legislated the use of nuclear weapons,” Yoon said in a speech.
The deal with the US will involve nuclear-armed submarines docking in South Korea for the first time in four decades in an effort to inhibit the Kim regime’s nuclear ambitions. Known as the Washington declaration, it seeks to allay Seoul’s growing fears about Pyongyang’s nuclear activity and to keep South Korea from restarting its own nuclear programme, which it gave up nearly 50 years ago.
Yoon, who was elected in May, indicated this year that South Korea was weighing whether to develop its own nuclear weapons or ask the US to redeploy them on the Korean peninsula.

Iran Unveils First Hypersonic Missile in Challenge to Israel and West  (James Rothwell, The Telegraph)

Hacks Against Ukraine’s Emergency Response Services Rise During Bombings  (Lily Hay Newman, Wired)
Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare has offered the free web security service Project Galileo for nearly a decade, giving human rights and public interest organizations around the world access to defenses against DDoS attacks and other common online hacking techniques.
In Ukraine, for example, Cloudflare found that emergency response services in numerous cities that are enrolled in Project Galileo—including those that perform search and rescue; offer medical care; and distribute supplies like food, water, and medicine—face spikes of malicious traffic concurrent with Russian bombings.

Finland’s Nuclear Catacombs Nearly Ready to House Waste  (Elias Huuhtanen, AFP / Phys.corg)
Deep within the bedrock in western Finland, flashing lights from heavy machinery cast shadows in eerie tunnels that lead to a tomb that must remain unperturbed for millennia.
There is a reason the catacomb on the lush island of Olkiluoto was buried 400 meters (1,312 feet) below ground: It will house the world’s first spent nuclear fuel disposal facility.
The project, which aims to solve the age-old quagmire of what to do with nuclear waste, is nearing completion in a region that is already home to Europe’s largest nuclear reactor.
The Onkalo repository is designed to house a total of 6,500 metric tons of uranium, covering the spent fuel produced by Finland’s five nuclear reactors during their lifetime.
Around 400,000 tons of used fuel have been discharged from reactors worldwide so far, the World Nuclear Association estimates, most of which is stored in temporary storage facilities near power plants.
But the long-term storage problem has cast a shadow on nuclear projects.