On a cold April night in Kyiv this year, families went to sleep under a sky they thought they understood. They knew the routine: the sirens, the scrambling to shelter, the grim mental math of range rings and flight times. What they did not expect was that the missile shattering a residential building in the Sviatoshynskyi district would be a North Korean KN-23, fired by Russia, killing a dozen civilians and injuring many more. Ukrainian investigators and President Volodymyr Zelensky have since confirmed that the weapon was manufactured in North Korea and supplied to Moscow, the latest proof that one war can now draw on multiple arsenals. (Reuters)

For years, U.S. officials have warned about growing cooperation among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. That warning now has debris fields and death tolls attached to it. The bipartisan Defending International Security by Restricting Unlawful (or Unacceptable) Partnerships and Tactics Act (the DISRUPT Act) is now a core principle in Section 1273 of the 2026 NDAA.  It requires Washington to treat that cooperation as a single strategic problem instead of four separate headaches. It will not prevent the next missile strike on its own. But it is still a necessary piece of plumbing in a national security system that was built for a different era. (DNI threat assessment)