Anton Koh used to belong to a unit of elite North Korean cyber operatives, says Dasl Yoon in The Wall Street Journal. Identified, trained and dispatched overseas by Kim Jong-un’s regime, their mission is to steal foreigners’ identities, use them to land remote IT jobs, then send their hard-earned cash back to Pyongyang to fund its nuclear programme. They are largely based in China and Russia, where the internet is better and won’t trace back to North Korea, and they have managed to infiltrate hundreds of Fortune 500 companies: in 2024, they reportedly generated a whopping $800m for their government. As one human rights executive put it: “A few IT workers can easily fund a missile.”

Koh was sent to China shortly after graduating from college. He worked 16-hour days from his state-run dormitory, which he shared with 10 other North Koreans and where portraits of the ruling Kim leaders hung on the wall. He was allowed to keep 10% of his earnings and was given a Sunday off if he met his monthly revenue quota of $5,000. When North Korea’s operations became better known and clients started demanding live-camera interviews for job openings, Koh paid Westerners to apply for roles in their own names – and even to show up for video meetings – while he carried out the actual work. His loyalty to the regime only faltered after he began discreetly surfing the web and read stories portraying his country in a far harsher light than he was used to seeing in Pyongyang’s state-run media. Soon afterwards, he defected to South Korea.

Every half an hour on a recent Tuesday night in Baghdad, says Raya Jalabi in the FT, Enrique Iglesias’s 2001 hit Hero floated out over Dijlah Village, a $180m luxury real estate development on the winding banks of the Tigris river. The song was a cue to the rich elite gathered there that the main attraction was about to start: a multicolour lightshow at the city’s largest dancing fountain, where jets burst out from their riverside platform. “We don’t need to go to Dubai any more,” says a young Iraqi graphic designer at a smart Lebanese restaurant. “Dubai came to us.”

Dijlah Village is only the most garish emblem of Iraq’s unexpected economic boom – one of several luxury malls, residential compounds and hotels that have opened in recent years. The city, once synonymous with violence, has blossomed under the relative calm brought by caretaker prime minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani, who has ignored regional conflict and concentrated on major infrastructure projects and foreign investment. A new skyscraper housing Iraq’s central bank is set to open soon; a restaurant which was once the headquarters of a 2019 anti-government uprising in Tahrir Square is being turned into a state-of-the-art luxury private hospital; a posh restaurant modelled on Dubai nightclubs regularly hosts rowdy soirées. It’s not perfect: one opposition politician points to pollution, corruption and a “moral decay” exemplified by the lavish Dijlah. Still, he’s there three times a week.

Donald Trump recently told a podcast he wanted to “nationalise” elections in 15 “crooked” states ahead of November’s midterms, says Susan Glasser in The New Yorker. This unprecedented and unconstitutional federal takeover of state business was necessary, the US president said, to avoid a repeat of the “rigged” 2020 election. House Speaker Mike Johnson has made similar complaints about election practices in certain blue states, while MAGA heavyweight Steve Bannon has said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will “surround” polling booths in November. His message to Democrats: “We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again.”

It may seem overwrought to take these statements seriously. But we live in a “post-January 6 world” and this is exactly the same playbook Trump used then, sowing seeds of doubt months in advance of election day. Nor is it just talk. Since returning to the White House, the US president has tried to make sweeping changes to the electoral process, in particular relating to ID; hired election deniers into key positions; and ordered investigations into the “non-existent fraud” he claims robbed him of victory in 2020. Last month, FBI agents raided an election headquarters in Georgia to seize evidence related to that defeat – accompanied, concerningly, by National Intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard. It’s also worth remembering that the only reason Trump didn’t send in National Guard troops to seize swing state voting machines in 2020 was because senior figures, including his attorney general, defence secretary and vice president, all objected, unwilling to shatter “one of the fundamental norms of American democracy”. Does anyone think for a moment the same would happen this time?