As authors of a book about space piracy, we’ve run into our share of polite scoffers who express incredulity that criminals could ever afford to get into space. Our response has been, “They’ll steal what they need, like airplane hijackers.” As events have shown, it’s far easier and cheaper for criminals to access space infrastructure than we imagined. They can just rent it.
A recent article in WIRED contains the bombshell revelation that criminal compounds in the lawless Tai-Cheng region on the Thailand-Myanmar border use Starlink internet terminals. Starlink enables them to conduct phone-based “pig butchering” scams targeting Americans.
The compounds in Tai-Cheng and nearby areas contain thousands of individuals lured to these places with false promises of legitimate work. Once on site, powerful criminal gangs force them to carry out the scams, with beatings and even killings serving as punishment for non-compliance.
The captives are forced to prey on lonely American or English men by phone and lure them into fraudulent investments using romance and sex. If you have ever gotten a text message from a strange woman wanting to chat, that’s probably what’s happening. It works, with this form of fraud costing American victims as much as $75 billion to date.
The governments of China, Thailand, and Myanmar are well aware of these compounds, but the reality is that they are too remote and too much under the control of local warlords for them to conduct any meaningful law enforcement. The governments have rescued some captives and cut off internet access to the compounds in the hopes of slowing down criminal activity, but the criminals simply subscribed to Starlink as a cost-effective workaround.
The American government has stepped in, trying to get Starlink to cut off access to the criminals. According to WIRED, Erin West, Deputy District Attorney for Santa Clara County in California, wrote to lawyers at SpaceX, Starlink’s parent company, asking for their help in “disrupting the work of bad actors.” SpaceX never got back to her.
This story is significant in its own right, a tale of untouchable criminality and victims on both sides of the equation. From the perspective of space piracy, however, the situation in Tai-Cheng offers an early glimpse of space’s lawless future. A region of Earth that is out of reach to law enforcement uses a communication backbone in space, which also appears to be beyond the grasp of law enforcement.
In this case, space provides a pathway for wire fraud that would be easy to stop if it had to rely on standard terrestrial communications networks. The law turns out to be poorly suited to combatting this scourge. And, a legitimate—and politically well-connected—American firm sits at the heart of the criminality, refusing to take any responsibility. Starlink explicitly bans such activities from its network, but it opts to do nothing in this case. It’s not clear why, but more may be revealed as time goes on.
There are some important lessons to learn here for those who want to mitigate the risk of space-based crime and piracy. One is that laws only matter when they can be enforced. This may sound obvious, but we feel it needs mentioning because more than a few people we’ve encountered in the policy world think that space-based crime won’t occur because it’s illegal and in violation of treaties.
The events of present-day Tai-Cheng echo those of the Caribbean in the 18th century. In that period, the so-called “golden age” of sea piracy, buccaneers formed formidable bases of operation in places like Jamacia, which at the time were as remote and lawless as Tai-Cheng is today. They could act with impunity. It happened then, and it’s happening now.
The powerlessness of nation-states in Tai-Cheng also resonates with the thesis put forth by Professor Margaret Sankey of the Air University in her book Blood Money: How Criminals, Militias, and Warlords Finance Violence. As she puts it, the world is complacent in its belief that Westphalian states, those countries with well-run governments and total sovereignty over their territories, are the norm. They are not. Much of the world works more like Tai-Cheng, where powerful criminal groups are in charge, with zero consequences for breaking the law.
Can we imagine a hijacked spacecraft landing in Tai-Cheng, away from any capability to intercept it? I think we can, as we can imagine an illegal launch facility being set up in such a place for space piracy. This is a preview of future space criminality. It offers stakeholders a chance to prepare if everyone can see it for what it is.
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-blue-denim-jacket-sitting-on-white-chair-6266676/