However, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose government regularly clashes with the opposition-aligned president, has sought to calm emotions, warning that the only one to benefit from conflict between Poland and Ukraine is Russia.

well maybe Ukraine should stop with these blatant fucking provocations then, how hard could it possibly be to just not worship goddamned mass murderers!?

“Unfortunately, President Zelensky has shown that Ukraine, in terms of mentality – glorifying bandits, murderers from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – is not ready to be part of the European family,” said Nawrocki on Friday morning. “Because in the European family, you cannot glorify bandits [who] murdered women and children, murdered Poles,” he added, after announcing that he would move to strip Zelensky of the order, which was awarded to him by Nawrocki’s predecessor, Andrzej Duda, in 2023. Nawrocki noted that a meeting of the body responsible for overseeing the order will next meet on 8 June, when he would propose discussing revoking Zelensky’s award. However, the president noted that the decision on doing so ultimately rests with him, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP). Nawrocki’s announcement comes amid growing anger in Poland over a decree issued by Zelensky on Wednesday, in which he named an operations centre for Ukraine’s special forces after the “heroes of the UPA”. He said he had done so “in order to restore the historical traditions of the national army”.

The UPA was a partisan formation created during World War Two as part of efforts to fight for an independent Ukrainian state. However, it was also responsible for the so-called Volhynia massacres, in which around 100,000 ethnic Poles, mostly women and children, were slaughtered, often with great brutality. The fact that the UPA and figures associated with it continue to be venerated in Ukraine has regularly caused tension with Poland. The two countries also often clash over the Volhynia massacres, which Poland regards as a genocide, a label Ukraine rejects. Zelensky’s decision immediately triggered condemnation from Poland’s right-wing opposition, which is aligned with Nawrocki and generally favours a tougher line towards Kyiv, especially regarding historical issues. Przemysław Czarnek, deputy leader of the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, called it “a shameful signal sent to Polish society” and “a demonstration of extreme ingratitude” towards a country that has been one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters since Russia’s full-scale invasion. “One cannot speak of partnership with Poland and reconciliation one day, only to glorify the following day the formations responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Poles,” wrote Czarnek on Wednesday. While the Polish government initially avoided commenting, on Friday morning, foreign ministry spokesman Maciej Wewiór issued a statement saying that Poland views Zelensky’s decision “in an unequivocally negative light” and is “raising this issue in conversations with our partners in Ukraine”. Naming something after the UPA “wounds the memory of this organisation’s victims”, harms dialogue between Poland and Ukraine, and “can be exploited by Russian propaganda, which seeks to divide us and undermine support for Ukraine”, added Wewiór.

"exploited by Russian propaganda", or, Russia being able to just go "we told you they were fascists!"

Broadcaster RMF reports that Polish deputy foreign minister Marcin Bosacki submitted a formal protest to Ukrainian ambassador Vasyl Bodnar on Thursday and warned that Zelensky’s decision would anger and alienate many Poles. Late on Friday morning, after Nawrocki – who regularly clashes with the more liberal government – had made his announcement, Tusk sought to calm the situation. “I would expect both presidents to be able to rise above these historical emotions and try to build this difficult but necessary Polish-Ukrainian friendship and cooperation,” said Tusk, quoted by broadcaster TVN. If not, “the Kremlin will truly have reason to rejoice”. The prime minister added, however, that Zelensky’s decision “violates our historical sensitivity”. He called for Ukrainians to show greater awareness of “what this grim legacy of the UPA means from the perspective of every Pole”. Meanwhile, among those to criticise Zelensky was former Polish president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Wałęsa, who is a strong supporter of Ukraine. He announced that he will now stop wearing a badge with a Ukrainian flag that is constantly on his chest during public appearances. “By honouring the UPA bandits, the president of Ukraine has insulted me and all our murdered compatriots,” wrote Wałęsa on social media. “I have therefore removed the Ukrainian flag from my chest. I will continue to help the nation in its fight against the Soviets [Russians]. I refuse to support President Zelensky!”

IT'S 2026! THE SOVIET UNION DOESN'T FUCKING EXIST ANYMORE () YOU DERANGED FREAKS!

While tensions over World War Two history regularly erupt between Poland and Ukraine, the two countries have in recent years also made tentative steps towards reconciliation. In 2023, Duda and Zelensky jointly commemorated the 80th anniversary of the Volhynia massacres. Last year, Ukraine also lifted its ban on the exhumation of victims of the massacres, tens of thousands of whom are believed to remain buried in unmarked mass graves. However, Kyiv last year also criticised Poland’s move to establish a national holiday commemorating “victims of genocide committed by the OUN-UPA”, as well as a proposed law by Nawrocki that would criminalise the promotion of ideologies associated with Second World War Ukrainian nationalist groups.

A series of large-scale strikes by the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) on Bryansk, Moscow, Perm, Tuapse, and many other targets deep inside Russia has left a clear impression: Kyiv’s long-range campaign is hitting harder than it used to. The images are certainly vivid: “oil rain” blanketing an entire city, a mass drone raid on Russia’s capital, and refineries under near constant attack. Despite all this activity, however, it’s hard to tell whether anything has changed in Ukraine’s strategy. Assessing the frequency and effectiveness of the strikes is challenging — both Moscow and Kyiv conceal their real losses and exaggerate the impact of their own strikes. The available sources that offer a reliable picture of the long-range war’s progress are few and far between. Meduza examines what we can confirm under these conditions.

Our main findings

• The frequency and depth of UAF strikes on Russian territory have risen substantially since mid-2025 and have held at a stable level — more than 30 verified attacks per month.
• There has been no surge in strike intensity in 2026, despite a number of high-profile attacks on Moscow, Tuapse, Perm, and other major cities.
• Strikes on oil infrastructure represent approximately one-third of Ukraine’s long-range campaign in 2026, consistent with the second half of 2025. Ukraine’s military has likely learned in recent months to target the refinery equipment that is particularly difficult to repair.
• The average range of UAF strikes against targets deep inside Russia has increased recently: in May, the figure doubled year-on-year, from 400 kilometers (249 miles) to 800 kilometers (497 miles).
• This may indicate that Russia’s air defenses are being depleted, but we don’t yet have enough data to verify.
• The UAF’s long-range campaign was most effective in its first phase, in late summer and early fall of 2025, when Russian refineries suffered their greatest capacity losses.
• By mid-fall of that same year, oil industry operators had adapted — judging by available data — to the more intensive strikes on their facilities, and had learned to repair damaged equipment quickly or draw on spare capacity.

What we know (and don’t know) about Ukraine’s strikes on Russian territory

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some stuff about the methodology here which I'll skip for brevity, feel free to check out the original article

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The campaign to intensify Ukrainian strikes on refineries in August 2025 was clearly successful in its initial phase. A chart IRR included in a December publication shows the number of oil distillation units taken offline.

The chart shows, first, that Russian refineries operated without disruption from May through August 2025, free of the widespread outages that had occurred in earlier periods — months during which a moratorium on long-range strikes against infrastructure was in effect. In August 2025, as the number of strikes began to rise sharply, the share of offline refining capacity jumped. The damage from the Ukrainian campaign peaked in mid-September, at 1.6 million barrels per day of “offline” capacity. The same chart shows, however, that the effects of the campaign were short-lived. By late October, offline refinery capacity had returned to normal levels (though some remained disabled). This occurred even as strikes on the oil industry continued and their intensity declined only slightly. Russia’s oil industry has apparently learned to bring spare or repaired distillation units back online relatively quickly. We do not yet have more recent data on refining volumes in Russia. Given, however, that the number of geolocated strikes on oil infrastructure is currently no higher than August–October 2025 levels, the sector is probably not faring much worse in 2026 than it did last year.

Mr. Thiel’s only known investment so far has been in personal real estate. Aside from the Buenos Aires home, across the street from a house owned by one of Argentina’s most famous actresses, Mr. Thiel has also bought a plot of land in neighboring Uruguay, a person familiar with the purchase said. The Uruguayan property, on sprawling grasslands studded with ranches, is near Punta del Este, a glamorous tourist destination on the Atlantic Ocean that people call the Hamptons of South America. Some observers have speculated that it could include a bunker to shelter from nuclear apocalypse. He would not be the first member of the global elite to think about the southern cone as a place to shelter from nuclear Armageddon. Martin Varsavsky, a Spanish-Argentine tech entrepreneur close to Mr. Thiel, has built a ranch in the Argentine city of Mendoza, which he has said he sees as a potential shelter in case of World War III. Mr. Varsavsky has hypothesized that Argentina would be completely unaffected if the northern hemisphere were wiped out by nuclear war. “The moment China takes Taiwan or Russia takes Lithuania, I’m in Buenos Aires,” he said. “It’s good to have a Plan B for civilization.”

The Saturday tournament at the Buenos Aires chess club hosted its usual lineup of players, including an accountant, a college student and schoolchildren. But this time, hunched over the club’s tiny wooden tables with them, was a new entrant: Peter Thiel, the right-wing tech billionaire and Trump donor. Mr. Thiel — who, according to one of the participants, “did not play badly” and came in third — had recently decamped from his homes in Los Angeles and Miami to establish a foothold thousands of miles away in Argentina’s capital. Over the past two months, Mr. Thiel has met with the country’s president, Javier Milei, and his ministers; purchased a mansion in one of Buenos Aires’ most exclusive neighborhoods; and hosted a dinner with local economists where he discussed the Antichrist, one of his favorite conversation topics, according to Argentine officials and people familiar with Mr. Thiel’s activities. Mr. Thiel, who has a history of collecting backup countries as he hedges his bets against the United States, is considering making Argentina another Plan B, according to two people familiar with his thinking. Born in Germany and raised in the United States, he received citizenship in New Zealand in 2011, and applied for a passport in Malta in 2022. His new roots in Argentina are partly motivated by his concerns about the direction of the United States, the people familiar with his thinking say, particularly California, where an initiative on November’s ballot could lead to a significant tax on billionaires. Argentina, a nation relatively insulated from potential conflicts in the Northern Hemisphere, also fits as a potential escape hatch from other risks that Mr. Thiel has publicly warned about — nuclear war and runaway artificial intelligence.

But Mr. Thiel has also been energized by what he’s discovered in Argentina, finding harmony with Mr. Milei’s libertarian slash-and-burn governance and becoming enamored with Buenos Aires’ vibrancy, the people said. They, and others familiar with the billionaire’s activities and discussions about the country, spoke on condition of anonymity to share private conversations. Mr. Thiel did not respond to a request for comment. Underscoring his belief in the country, Mr. Thiel, 58, has temporarily relocated his family to Argentina and enrolled his children in a local school, two of the people said. The Argentine government has also explored offering the billionaire permanent residence or even citizenship, a person familiar with Mr. Thiel’s plans said, though it’s currently unclear whether he would accept. A spokesman for Mr. Milei denied such an offer had been considered. The Argentine government is currently working to establish a “golden passport” program that would allow people who make large investments in the country to obtain citizenship.

fucking galt's gulch ass country

“All billionaires of the world who want to flee countries increasingly regulated, with higher taxes and governments that persecute their citizens, are welcome in the Argentine republic, the new land of freedom,” Manuel Adorni, Mr. Milei’s cabinet chief, said last month before congress, answering a question about Mr. Thiel. Mr. Thiel, he added, was “interested in the deep reforms that we are bringing forward.”

An ideological ally

Argentina may be an unlikely place for a billionaire looking for stability. The country has careened through nearly a century of instability, marred by military coups and spectacular financial collapses epitomized by triple-digit inflation. But in Mr. Milei, Mr. Thiel has an ideological ally. The two men share an aversion for taxes, socialism and “wokeness” — a negative label critics use to describe progressive politics. Since becoming president in 2023, Mr. Milei has sought to overhaul Argentina’s economy, pushing sweeping deregulation and government spending cuts. He has sought to attract foreign investment in the country’s natural resources, including oil, lithium and rare earth minerals. Mr. Thiel and Mr. Milei first met in person in 2024 in a meeting brokered by Alec Oxenford, a former tech entrepreneur who is now Argentina’s ambassador to the United States, according to a person familiar with the meeting who requested anonymity to share private details publicly. Mr. Oxenford, whose online marketplace company, OLX, received funding from Mr. Thiel’s venture capital firm more than 15 years ago, had been encouraging the then-new Argentine president to meet with influential American business people.

Mr. Thiel, who has vehemently opposed taxes in the United States, grew more interested in Argentina after California political groups began discussing a voter initiative that would apply a 5 percent tax on the assets of the state’s billionaires. By the end of last year, Mr. Thiel was considering cutting ties with the Golden State, and started exploring living outside California. Mr. Thiel first started seriously considering Argentina as a place to live, at least temporarily, about a year ago and began looking at Buenos Aires real estate, the two people familiar with his thinking said. They said he also hired a local art dealer to furnish his home. Since arriving in Buenos Aires in April, Mr. Thiel and his husband, Matt Danzeisen, have dined at the home of Argentina’s deregulation minister, Federico Sturzenegger, a person familiar with the dinner said. Mr. Thiel met separately with the economy minister, Luis Caputo. The billionaire and an associate from his venture capital firm, Founders Fund, also spent time with Mr. Milei last month at the presidential house. In an interview with a streaming channel following that meeting, Mr. Milei said that the meeting was one of two like-minded individuals and that Mr. Thiel asked how he would ensure that libertarianism endures in Argentina beyond his presidency. “It was an anarcho-capitalist who met another anarcho-capitalist who is bringing things to life,” Mr. Milei said.

yeah, "life"

A backup country

Mr. Thiel’s interest in Argentina is not solely because of his alignment with Mr. Milei’s policies. Mr. Thiel also appears to be enjoying Argentine life. He attended Argentina’s most storied soccer game — between Buenos Aires rivals River Plate and Boca Juniors — and traveled to Bariloche, a lakeside mountain resort in Patagonia. Last month at a candlelit dinner at Mr. Thiel’s Buenos Aires mansion, influential economists and Argentine intellectuals gathered with the billionaire to discuss the country’s history and economy, before the conversation turned to the Antichrist,

according to three people familiar with the gathering. Some in attendance were unsure of what to make of their host’s apocalyptic musings, on an entity which he has warned in lectures could establish a totalitarian world government, but they listened intently.

uh, yeah, sure, I'm listening intently... let me just go to the bathroom real quick...

The chess tournament this month in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Almagro was a more upbeat affair. Mr. Thiel, who was the highest-rated player in the competition, posed for photos while wearing his third-place medal and stayed to play chess with a child, said Rafael Jabie, a therapist, who finished second. Mr. Milei and his supporters have been quick to embrace the billionaire as one of their own. “He is already more Argentine” than left-wingers, Juan Pablo Carreira, who runs the Argentine presidency’s digital communications, wrote on X, using an offensive term for his political opponents. Daniel Parisini, a right-wing pundit close to Mr. Milei, posted an A.I.-generated picture of Mr. Thiel sitting in front of a parrilla, the quintessential Argentine barbecue, while others online created images of Mr. Thiel eating milanesa, a traditional breaded meat cutlet, inside an Argentine home. In a polarized nation, rapidly changing under Mr. Milei, Mr. Thiel’s presence has been viewed starkly differently across the political spectrum. Government supporters see the venture capitalist’s presence as proof that Mr. Milei is successfully turning Argentina into a haven for foreign investors. Mr. Milei’s critics, however, see it as another example of the country being sold out to unbridled capitalism. “What Peter Thiel is doing is terrible,” Elisa Lilita Carrió, an Argentine politician, wrote on X, mentioning Palantir, the big-data firm he co-founded and now chairs. “His settling in Argentina is even worse,” she added. Others have spread theories that he was coming to meddle in next year’s presidential elections, build large data centers or seize Argentine’s personal data with Palantir, which has deep relationships with the U.S. government.

At a time when the American public is expressing unprecedented levels of distrust in the Israeli government, Congress just proposed tying the U.S. to the Israeli military more than ever before. Buried in the House's version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released on Tuesday, is section 224, entitled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.” The provision would arguably do more to intertwine the U.S. military with the Israeli military than the more than $200 billion (inflation adjusted) in military assistance Israel has received from the U.S. since its founding in 1948. Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation. The U.S. and Israel already work together heavily on missile defense, but this provision would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, and many more. It also proposes “network integration” and “data fusion.” In other words, the U.S. military’s data could soon be the Israeli military’s data. If fully enacted, this proposal would provide a higher level of military-industrial integration than the U.S. has with any other country in the world.

To be sure, the U.S. has worked closely with its NATO partners on co-production and shared supply chains, most notably via the Defence Production Action Plan. And, as the number one arms dealer in the world, the U.S. provides weapons to militaries across the globe. But that is mostly a one-way street, with the U.S. providing weapons to foreign buyers who only occasionally make parts for those weapons themselves, as in the case of the F-35’s global supply chain. Section 224 would be a different beast entirely. It would fuse the U.S. and Israeli defense sectors in multiple areas vital to the battlefields of the future, like autonomous systems and cyber. It would also bring extraordinary Israeli influence to the U.S. beyond what it already has through the Israel lobby and its robust network of social media influencers. It would give the Israeli government the opportunity to greatly expand one of the most powerful levers of influence in U.S. politics: jobs in the U.S. By expanding or starting new co-production facilities like it already has in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could boast of providing jobs on U.S. soil, thereby securing allies among members of Congress who represent the districts where those jobs lie. The result could well be a U.S. political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the U.S. into military conflicts in the Middle East. This unprecedented level of U.S.-Israeli military integration stands in stark contrast to the traditional aid model of defense cooperation, in which Israel already stood out as the top recipient of U.S. military assistance. As laid out in a recent Quincy Institute brief, authored by one of us — Steven Simon — this shift from an aid model to a military integration model has troubling implications, namely:

The shift will strip away the political and diplomatic oversight mechanisms that make the relationship publicly accountable, moving it from a visible annual aid vote into the opaque machinery of defense acquisition, where oversight is limited and political accountability is minimal. The result would be a defense relationship that is simultaneously deeper and less transparent.

This all comes at a time when the Israeli military has repeatedly used U.S. weapons in strikes that have violated international humanitarian laws in Gaza, and as Israel has repeatedly violated ceasefires (as has the U.S. itself) in the Trump administration’s unnecessary war with Iran. The enormous gulf between what most Americans want and what the president is doing when it comes to Israel and what Congress is proposing here should not be ignored. Just 30% of respondents to a New York Times/Sienna poll from mid-May believe Trump made “the right decision” to go to war with Iran, with 64% saying it was wrong. An Institute for Global Affairs poll released earlier this week dove even deeper into the American psyche when it comes to arming Israel, finding that “Just 16 percent say the United States should keep supplying Israel with weapons without new restrictions. Thirty-eight percent want to stop supplying weapons entirely, and another 24 percent want weapons conditioned on how they’re used.” Yet, mainstream leadership in both parties remains largely pro-Israel and continues to shape the base legislative text before amendments and broader congressional debate open it to the full body, as is the case with this NDAA provision.

Though slowly, tides within both parties are shifting as more and more members speak out against the growing divide between Israel’s actions and America’s interests. For example, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) wrote in The New York Times on Tuesday that, “The Democratic Party has provided reflexive and unconditional support to Israeli governments, even as their actions have increasingly undermined American interests and values.” On the Republican side of the aisle, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) have openly decried the Israel lobby’s corrosive influence — a stance that may have, at least partially, cost both of them their seats in Congress. What can other members of Congress who are concerned about Israel’s destabilizing actions do right now? Stop the Israeli-U.S. military-industrial merger in its tracks. Lawmakers should reject Section 224 from the NDAA to avoid deep integration with Israel's military at a time when a growing number of Americans oppose Israel's actions in the region.

The United States just used its most powerful conventional bombs against the deepest underground nuclear facility in the world. Those bombs worked — and they also revealed exactly where current physics ends and the next weapons problem begins. DARPA is now looking for solutions to that problem. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s research arm responsible for developing technologies that define the next generation of American military capability, published a request for information on May 27, seeking what it calls “disruptive approaches” to penetration mechanics and shock propagation control. The document describes a program aimed at moving beyond everything current bunker-busting munitions can do, targeting the fundamental physics of how objects penetrate hardened materials and how explosive shockwaves travel through solid structures. Responses are due June 26, 2026. On June 22, 2025, seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers delivered 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs, the largest conventional bomb in the American arsenal at 30,000 pounds, against Iran’s Fordow uranium enrichment facility, buried 80 to 90 meters beneath a mountain near the city of Qom. The GBU-57, which was specifically developed to destroy facilities like Fordow, can penetrate approximately 60 meters of reinforced concrete or rock. Multiple strikes can increase that effective depth. The Fordow strikes, part of Operation Midnight Hammer, were among the most technically demanding precision strike operations in American history, and they revealed the outer edge of what existing penetrator technology can achieve against hardened targets.

Satellite imagery and open-source intelligence through May 2026 shows that Iran, responding to the strikes, has been excavating new facilities to depths of 80 to 100 meters under hard granite, potentially deeper than Fordow and potentially beyond the reliable reach of existing bunker-busting munitions. The same report notes the program appears intended to house a new generation of centrifuges. The adversary’s countermove to the GBU-57 is simply to dig deeper and use harder rock, and the physics that govern how a 30,000-pound steel penetrator behaves when it hits granite at high velocity have not changed since the bomb was designed. DARPA’s RFI addresses that physics problem directly and at a fundamental level. The document asks for ideas that go beyond what it calls “traditional mass-velocity scaling and empirical design,” the current engineering paradigm in which penetrators are made heavier and faster to dig deeper. Instead, DARPA wants approaches that “deliberately shape, steer, amplify, or suppress stress waves” within materials, that manipulate the material state of what a penetrator is passing through under extreme loading conditions, and that treat the shockwave generated by penetration as a design variable to be engineered rather than a physical consequence to be endured.

To understand what that means in practical terms, some background on penetration physics is necessary. When a hardened steel penetrator strikes reinforced concrete or rock at high velocity, two things happen simultaneously: the penetrator physically displaces material as it moves forward, and the impact generates a shockwave that radiates outward through the surrounding structure. Current penetrator design optimizes the first process, using geometry, material hardness, and velocity to maximize forward displacement. The shockwave, by contrast, is largely treated as a byproduct, carrying energy away from the penetration channel in ways that current designs do not actively control. What DARPA is describing is a fundamentally different paradigm, one in which the shockwave itself becomes a weapon. If the stress waves generated by penetration could be steered and amplified at a specific depth within the target structure, the effective damage could reach far beyond the physical penetration depth of the weapon body. Alternatively, controlling how failure initiates and propagates within hardened material could allow a smaller, lighter penetrator to achieve damage previously requiring a much larger weapon. The RFI specifically mentions “controlled failure initiation and progression” and “the coupling of structural, material, and geometric effects to achieve step-change performance against complex targets” as areas of explicit interest. The Air Force awarded Applied Research Associates a 24-month contract in 2025 to develop prototype hardware for the Next Generation Penetrator, a program intended to replace the GBU-57 and designed to strike hardened bunkers, tunnels, and deeply buried targets. The Air Force requested $74 million in its fiscal 2026 budget to continue research, ground sub-scale testing, and full-scale static tests for the program. The NGP program and the DARPA RFI are parallel tracks addressing the same operational problem, one focused on near-term hardware development and one on the longer-range science that might make a fundamentally different kind of weapon possible.

The DARPA document also asks for enabling technologies that could support the underlying research, including “architected or actively tunable materials,” meaning materials whose internal structure can be designed or modified to interact with shockwaves in specific ways, and “advanced diagnostics capable of resolving high-strain-rate phenomena in situ,” meaning measurement tools that can observe what actually happens inside a material in the microseconds during and after a high-velocity impact. Both of these categories reflect a broader problem in penetration research: the events of interest happen so fast, in such extreme conditions, that they are very difficult to measure accurately, and designs have historically been validated by testing rather than by a full physical understanding of the mechanisms involved. Iran is digging deeper, and China has been building hardened underground facilities for military command infrastructure, weapons storage, and missile basing for decades, a program known in defense planning circles as the Underground Great Wall. North Korea’s nuclear program relies heavily on tunneled facilities deliberately placed beyond the reach of current American strike packages. The physics problem DARPA is trying to crack is not abstract, and the countries that motivated the question are still burrowing. What gets built in response to this RFI may determine whether the next generation of American penetrating weapons can keep pace with that.