Thailand to Cut Power to Myanmar Scam Hubs
bangkoklocal.info
bangkoklocal.info
Crypto use cases:
1. Financing North Korea's nuclear missile program
2. Harrowing scams
Hell, the lady I get very much not legal shrooms from has a Shopify site. I get a receipt in my email, a tracking number, and she asks to rate her shop 5 stars.
Saying that this is a use-case for crypto implies a level of drug enforcement that simply doesn't exist.
You can use crypto to buy drugs on the "dark web" but like all crypto things it's not a system for the masses. I had to explain E2EE one of my friends who thought Snapchat was better than iMessage for buying drugs because it "deletes" the message. There's no universe she's gonna figure out crypto.
Source? “Dark web” is sort of a perfectly-useless mix of trust and trust-less for a high-volume actor. You don’t know who’s on the other side, definitively. But they at least know a mailing address you can get to.
Your point about the mailing address is a good one though. I had not thought about that.
I know someone who buys their drugs rarely but in large quantities in this way. They are not a dealer but essentially use quite a bit and ask friends what they want and then order a couple thousand euros worth of stuff to get the volume discount and to reduce the amount of packages.
I’ve never met anyone who has bought drugs on the dark web and I know more drug dealers than most people.
Weed finds it way to the people who need it from the people that grow it through a network of middlemen/brokers. Cocaine, meth, and fentanyl wholesaling is pretty much cartel dominated.
Unsure about other drugs, I know online is a common way that obtain LSD (and other psychedelics like 5-MeO-DMT, 2CB) but I’ve always bought it in person.
It gets awkward if someone dies, but even then they're just tracing stuff to go after the person that dealt the drugs, who is in a quagmire of ratting out a cartel (instant game over) or taking the L and going to jail.
Could all change at any moment of course.
Honestly curious.
...hail hydra
[0] https://podfollow.com/1780384916/episode/f35cdceabf691d505eb...
> An airlift carrying more than 1,000 Chinese nationals who had worked at online scam centers in eastern Myanmar began Thursday.. Thailand, China and Myanmar have coordinated efforts over the past month to shut down the scam centers that bilked victims around the world out of billions of dollars through false romantic ploys, bogus investment pitches and illegal gambling schemes. Thai officials said recently that as many as 10,000 people may be repatriated from Myanmar.. Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra on a visit to Beijing earlier this month told Chinese leader Xi Jinping that Thailand would crack down on the scam networks. Just ahead of her visit, Thailand cut off electricity, internet and gas supplies to several areas in Myanmar.. An earlier crackdown on scam centers in Myanmar happened in late 2023.. Ethnic guerrilla groups with close ties to Beijing shut down many operations
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43149372
> This all happened because they kidnapped a Chinese actor, maybe fake casting call ads are not the wisest idea - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Wang_Xing
On January 3, 2025, Wang Xing (stage name "Xingxing"), a Chinese actor, was deceived into a scam center in Myanmar by a fraud group under the pretext of "going to Thailand for filming work". After Wang Xing lost contact, his girlfriend Jiajia posted a message for help through social media and actively contacted relevant authorities. This incident attracted the attention of the Chinese film industry. Many actors posted about this matter, prompting the Chinese Embassy in Thailand, the Chinese Consulate General in Chiang Mai and the Thai police to intervene in the investigation and search and rescue.
> Thailand wants to cooperate with China since reports about scam workers being trafficked through Thailand have circulated widely on Chinese social media. The Thai government and others fear it will discourage the lucrative market of inbound Chinese tourists.
> about 200 Chinese citizens “suspected of involvement in fraud” were flown to an airport in the city of Nanjing, China’s official Xinhua news agency said.
You're probably right some people inside the CCP protect those scam bosses, I would not bet an arm that Xi is encouraging it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myawaddy?wprov=sfti1#Crime
ed: deduplicate to; regret the last 28 minutes of my life.
The 14K triad was originally founded by former Kuomintang generals as an anti-communist action group. In the past, they were heavily involved in transporting and distributing drugs from the Golden Triangle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14K_(triad)
is it true that you can only get information from the Economist or NYT or CNN or BBC or wikipedia?
have anyone of you tried to get information from other sources? like some non-english articles and posts? or from some chinese who live in china?
What they do to those foreigners thinking they are going for a great job in thailand, while in reality being smuggled into myanmar against their will, is surreal
It could even be that everyone is misjudging the asians entirely? And it's bad enough that at even the slightest provocation from the warlords, we'll see Thai and Chinese troops flood in. Consequences be damned. This would be the worst outcome for the rest of the world, but probably the best outcome for the people currently being terrorized and held hostage by these thugs. I just hope it doesn't get to that point.
That is absolutely not how Thailand works. If Thailand does anything, it’ll be exclusively on the Thai side of the border.
It's got it's own factions, and mid-level leadership (especially the farther out you get from Naypyidaw) allies with China, Thailand, or India.
(Edit: here you go. An overview from 2021 by the Tea Circle group formerly at St Anthony's College, Oxford but now at UToronto Munk - https://teacircleoxford.com/politics/peering-under-the-hood-...)
A lot of this came up in a meetup I participated in a couple years ago at HKS.
But at a high level, you'll see Chinese weapon sales [0] happen at the same time as Indian weapon sales [1] to the Tatmadaw, despite both China and India directly competing with each other.
Sadly, Myanmar was always a basket case because the British ignored it when it was British India and later British Burma, so outside the Bamar core, the state never truly existed on the ground.
And after the 2020 China-India standoff, Myanmar became even more of a conflict zone because at it's shortest it's a 40 mile buffer zone between Assam and Yunnan.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/un-expert-says-russia-china-se...
[1] - https://amp.dw.com/en/how-india-is-supporting-myanmars-milit...
But many of them are in people side and spying for revolution forces.
> Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra on a visit to Beijing earlier this month told Chinese leader Xi Jinping that Thailand would crack down on the scam networks. Just ahead of her visit, Thailand cut off electricity, internet and gas supplies to several areas in Myanmar.. Thailand wants to cooperate with China since reports about scam workers being trafficked through Thailand have circulated widely on Chinese social media. The Thai government and others fear it will discourage the lucrative market of inbound Chinese tourists.
You mean the Third Indochina War? It wasn't really about Cambodia being a failed state but a far consequence of a Sino-Soviet split.
For Vietnam, Cambodia is their near abroad. Saigon is barely 20 miles away from Cambodia, and the Mekong is the lifeblood of Southern Vietnam, and Cambodian factions (the same ones the Chinese backed in the 1970s) had supported anti-Vietnamese insurgencies in Gia Lai.
Cambodia and Laos became a buffer state for China+Thailand and Vietnam the same way Myanmar has become one for China, Thailand, and India.
Plenty of the rebel groups consult with Southern Baptist pastors - especially in Chin State and Saigang.
Depends on where those policy people are from.
I'm American but my extended family is in the Dogra Regiment (IYKYK - and also why I haven't been nominated as an [or is it "a", me fail Eng.i.mean.phonetics after a couple Blantons] SES for US-India relations over the past 15ish years), so I have absolutely no hope. Myanmar has become yet another battlefield for China and India to flex, and it's millions of innocent civilians who face the brunt of this little d** syndrome.
My friends who haven't been purged by DOGE or are doing the purging on behalf of DOGE don't know these intricacies.
And this pisses me off. There are millions of innocent civilians facing rape, human trafficking, murder, and ethnic cleansing because a couple limp d**s in Naypawday, Kunming, Imphal, and Bangkok couldn't care enough to negotiate a true path to peace.
> I feel like we just need to give intelligence + a couple billion in weapons to a Burmese version of Dostum
There are like 50 Dostums in Myanmar. If you ever followed a "true" history of the Afghan Civil War, you'd see the same situation arise in the 1990s. Both Pakistan and India would fund their favorite warlords with weapons and rupees (my mom went to college with Hamid Karzai), and give their families asylum (if you want Ahmad Shah Massoud's [0] family's address in Delhi-3 I gotchu).
China, Thailand, and India are doing the same thing in Myanmar (and did the same thing 30 years ago).
> Then get some highly decentralized federalism in place (draw the rest of the owl).
And then Cls like my Phuphar in the Dogras would bribe (or put a bullet in) them to make sure they don't flip to the Chinese, and it becomes Libya or Congo 2.0 because the equivalent in China or Thailand is 100% doing the same.
> Form a coalition with other EAOs that matter, sort of like the Northern Alliance, and take over Tatmadaw controlled cities one by one.
Some EAOs are funded by China. Others by India. And others by Thailand. For all intents and purposes, none of these countries view Myanmar as a "real" country, and are working on splitting it up amongst the EAOs they are funding (or honeytrapped).
I read a book about Dostum and I vaguely remember they actually had multiple candidates in mind originally. There was Rabbani, Dostum and I think some others, but they chose Dostum cause he had the least baggage and ties to Iran. Problem is in Myanmar might not be anyone with real power who is even defensible. You don't hear too many bad things about say the TNLA, but that might just be a function of them not being important enough to make headlines in English news. I get the impression the KNLA is the most legitimate EAO in the eyes of Western governments yet their leaders are on tape negotiating heroin deals and brokering uranium [1], so maybe my hope for a unifier to come out of these armed groups is a bit unrealistic.
[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.57...
We are in progress to restore democracy but a lot of us are suffering. No western power help us. We are mostly on our own.
And narrative of EOA being funded by China, Thailand, India is false. EOA had nad alliance and bargain with those nation to, they have to buy the weapons and do the trades but none of them funded and controlled by those bigger powers ( MNDAA tho, had unfortunately had to bow down to china after threat of elimination if they don't broker peace deal with Myanmar military after their leader got captured by CCP during call for a meeting for peace talk)
It you want to know more details please ask a local. Many western media rarely have an ideal of what's going on.
I agree to a certain extent. The EOAs were created by individual Myanmarese who faced the brunt of the regime (a major reason as you mentioned behind the PDF movement), but at least in Chin, Saigang, and Kachin the EOAs do have to collaborate closely with India or China (Intel, weapons, medical care) because they have significant investments which changes the calculus, and worst case justify limited cross-border interventions (but both Chinese and Indian have done so a number of times)
> We are in progress to restore democracy but a lot of us are suffering. No western power help us. We are mostly on our own
Absolutely. I think what the PDFs are doing is extremely difficult and admirable, but a lot of the EOAs are not necessarily aligned with the PDF movement and in a lot of cases collaborated with the Junta.
Not a lot, just a few. Pa O and Karen BGF are only supporter. SSA is neutral. It's like only 2 of of 100 actually.
Now the people armed up , united alongside ethnic armed forces and taking back.
BGF is aligned to military juntas and Chinese scam gangs.
Imagine if The Trump Organization (the holding company) had its own army, the generals owned shares in the army's business, and there was no civil society outside of the army. That is Myanmar's situation. I can't understate how tyrannical and corrupt it is.
Myanmar is basically a Southeast Asian version of Congo.
All the neighboring countries (China, India, Thailand) have already de facto intervened by maintaining relations with and arming regional warlords, and "their" guys in the Tatmadaw.
For example,
- China and the MDNAA [0] and the Wa State [1], and their "Goma" is Muse and Mongla
- India and the ethnic Chin opposition [2][3] and the Arakan Army [4] (the guys who did the Rohingya Genocide - they flipped from China to India in 23-24), and their "Goma" is Tamu and Sittwe.
- Thailand's Military Government's continued support of the Myanmar Tatmadaw [5], and their "Goma" is Myawaddy, Payathonzhu, Shwekoko (the city mentioned above), and Mawdaung.
China, India, and Thailand are all enabling the worst actors in Myanmar's civil war, and it's the civilians that lose.
> They did that in the 1970s with Cambodia
Which sparked a regional war with Vietnam in 1979, and multiple coups and counter-coups by Chinese and Vietnamese backed factions in Cambodia and Laos.
If Cambodia and Laos was chaotic, Myanmar will be 1,000 times worse, because several ethnic groups in Myanmar have large (1mil+) populations in both China and India, so the risk of regional contagion is massive, and has already started in Manipur [6].
[0] - https://www.usip.org/publications/2024/08/myanmars-junta-los...
[1] - https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/ethnic-issues/wa-state-aims-t...
[2] - https://www.bnionline.net/en/news/chinland-council-and-chin-...
[3] - https://theprint.in/india/chin-rebel-leader-lauds-indias-hel...
[4] - https://thediplomat.com/2024/03/is-india-finally-waking-up-t...
[5] - https://r2pasiapacific.org/files/8231/2022_Thai_response_mya...
[6] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/fighters-myanmar-civil-w...
No argument there. Those guys are horrible. They make Mao, Phibunsongkhram, and Indira Gandhi look like saints.
> It also has never really exercised any control of the borderlands, which are where rebel groups like those in Manipur often congregate
No argument there, despite half my family being veterans of the Dogra Regiment (IYKYK)
> Even prior to the development of the scam industry, out of work Chinese in provinces like Yunnan would often seek opportunity in the more well run EAO quasi-states
Because there was an "anti-corruption crackdown" that in Yunnan lead to criminal gangs (especially in the prostitution and drug space) being kicked out in 2012-15 to Myanmar. In reality, a lot of those guys didn't pay the right people off, so they left for ASEAN.
> There are well-maintained paved roads in Pangkham, which can't be said for much of the country.
100% True. And I don't blame local councils for supporting Chinese investment there.
But it's something even a local village councils could organize if the central government existed.
This is why China, Thailand, and India exert power in the hinterlands of Myanmar.
Myanmar has the right mix of human capital and low cost, but a horrible government meant it's outside countries using their worse people to access that capital (gangs)
China and Thailand are conducting policing operations in Burmese territory, it’s already a failed state.
Gut Ding will Kurzweil haben.
Once DOGE eliminates the US government, we will all be either vassals of megacorporations, living in corp arcologies, or homeless with our punk band in burnt-out shipping containers.
They obviously would have taken a hit and Thailand has already shut down cell towers on the Cambodia border near Poi Pet where they moved some operations.
They should have been reading HN and how solar is cheaper than anything else, silly criminals doing real world stuff.
This all happened because they kidnapped a Chinese actor, maybe fake casting call ads are not the wisest idea - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Wang_Xing
But I think this will come back again. This kidnapping thing is not new, and it caught media attention a few years ago as well, they just go silent for a period of time and continue their operation later.
It's such an open secret that there was a $500MM box office movie about it last year, and media censorship is so heavy in China that I wonder what admitting this even means.
Is there public data on their demographics, e.g. occupation, income, age, credit score, region of China?
The real question is why there hasn't been any remotely comparable response from the US. Every EAO that matters is aligned with China and thus doesn't care when Americans are scammed. The US should make them care.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_1027
[1] https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3141474/beij...
Thanks for the links though; I was unaware the PLA was directly involved with the latest offenses.
This is a good thing.
Scammers just require a laptop and an internet connection.
1 little honda generator and 1 star link connection could keep 100 scammers scamming 24x7 with very little fuel use.
Little generators are already commonplace in Myanmar. Can't comment on starlink connections, but I assume people will find a way...
Cutting off the grid electricity might prevent electricity theft for bitcoin mining, but it's going to do nothing against scammers.