SpaceX disables 2,500 Starlink terminals allegedly used by Asian scam centers
130 comments
·October 23, 2025perihelions
miroljub
It won't be the first time that Starlink takes a side in a military conflict somewhere in the world. Somewhere they do it openly and boast proudly about it, somewhere they just keep it quiet.
altacc
The truth is more likely that both the junta and local militias have ties to different scam centres. The Myanmar government never does anything for its people, it's motivated by power and money and they were profiting heavily from scam centres until China's patience broke, due to large numbers of Chinese being trafficked and imprisoned at these scam compounds. The junta needs China's support in order to survive. As the junta lost control of the border regions the local militias stepped in to either profit from scams or close them to please China, depending upon what they thought would benefit them most.
whimsicalism
i haven’t seen any good evidence tying the Tatmadaw to these large-scale scam operations, while I have seen a fair bit of evidence tying a few of the regional militias.
wraptile
It's a very well proven fact that the scam centers are operated by Chinese given that before covid they were all Chinese casinos that transitioned to online scams because no Chinese could leave China to spend their money there.
Cthulhu_
If it's a very well proven fact, can you link to some objective sources to your strongly worded claims? Given that clearly this is a very politically sensitive subject, I'm not going to trust a commenter on the internet on their own.
wraptile
Wikipedia is a good start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KK_Park
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shwe_Kokko
Statement by US Treasury: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0237
If you ever been to Myanmar you'd know that Burmese simply have no capability of operating something like this, especially now.
ralfd
The nominal group in power should be able to deny/allow communication from the space above their country though.
ferbivore
You think resistance movements should never have telecommunications access?
heisgone
One's freedom fighter is someone else terrorist.
sbarre
You think the issue is that black and white?
swarnie
That's not what OP is saying.
An entity truly in control should be able to deny access to insurrectionists because of you know, being in control.
jayd16
It's wild to me how many of these comments are appealing to local law without any thought to what is just.
If the local law was to deny all women or some ethnic group access to communication, the world should do it without question?
Workaccount2
>If the local law was to deny all women
Palestine gets widespread support
charcircuit
Yes, if they are operating within that region, then they should be following local laws. Allowing companies to break laws they don't agree with is a bad precedent to set.
maccard
Whether or not you like it, that's how international relations works.
The US famously has gripes with Cuba, Iran, HK, Afghanistan and others, that affect those countries unfairly. If another country decides to side with Iran, they'll find themselves on the US sanction list. So is it more just to deny the people of your country access to trade and interaction with the US?
infthi
The precedent seems to be that anyone can broadcast anything without caring what territories can receive your broadcast (see Voice of America broadcasts during the Cold War or GPS jamming in the Baltic nowadays). This seems to be extendable to broadcasting from space. The nominal group in power may ban/jam _receiving_ equipment on their territory though.
fnfs2000
US law prohibits Starlink from transmitting into countries that don't permit it, with exceptions as directed by the US Government. If this was not the case, Starlink would have made its product available globally instead of having to seek permission from every country they want to service (called "landing rights")
Cthulhu_
Depends if your country claims to be free or not, or what your own morals and values are - if you believe in "might makes right", then sure, the ones in power get to suppress freedom of information to the rest of the country. If you believe in a free democracy, then information and communication should be free (think freedom of speech, press, information, etc).
nradov
There is no single group which has power over all of Myanmar. It is a failed state.
vessenes
Hard no. Communications is a human right. I’d say routing communications as a private company is a privilege that can be extended or denied, but this perspective is poison IMO.
vintermann
Why?
itchyjunk
Law of the land. Must follow it to operate in that jurisdiction
pixl97
Because that's how a sovereign nation works. Have a problem with it? Talk to the gun.
croes
Would SpaceX comply if it was an order from a Brazilian court?
jacknews
They may well deny it, but there's plenty of international documentation showing it is indeed a thing, and presumably starlink have even more evidence.
moralestapia
>presumably aiding one side or the other in some unclear way
"I'm strongly opposed to one side or the other gaining a possible advantage or disadvantage in some unclear way"
LOL
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
It's important to know that anything Elon or Tesla or SpaceX says about freedom of speech or libertarianism, is subject to either the US government or President Trump or Elon's personal beliefs about freedom of speech.
Which so far have been "I support complete freedom of speech. (for myself, and censorship for others)"
They aren't going to sell a product that could be used against them. Our allies are reasonably asking if the high-tech F-35 fighters have kill switches too
whimsicalism
Any topic related to Elon Musk seems to get flooded with low-entropy uninteresting comments.
iknowstuff
A scam is a scam right
boringg
Right - shutdown the scam centers. Why is this so hard? If one group is using the scam center to power their resistance ... that resistance is built on a really bad foundation.
I get that if you are shutting down comms for an an org thats different - but if its a known scam center not a tough decision here.
zyf
Not advocating for either side here, but the ability for US gov to control/influence internet access on a global scale is, to me, the main driver behind Starlink. tinfoil hat off
shellfishgene
Isn't the percentage of the world population that gets internet via Starlink very low? Also, how was the US government involved in the creation of Starlink?
Jeremy1026
There is an argument that could be made that if the government didn't provide SpaceX contracts they'd never have the capital available to put Starlink into operation.
boringg
Agree with you - Starlink doesn't have a government connection. In fact the reason it was successful is that it didn't have one. The government connected internet was the landlines that the cable companies were trying to deploy in the rural America for high cost tax paying dollars.
It is a US company though - but I think this is very tin foil hat territory here.
jeromegv
> Starlink doesn't have a government connection.
US DOD is contracting Starlink in Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russian-Ukrain...
lofaszvanitt
Oh watch as the new phones get satellite access for cents......
Mountain_Skies
Starshield is a very important revenue stream that helps fund Starlink overall.
alt227
How do Starlink IP addresses work with Geolocation? Does Starlink have access to IP address blocks for all coutnries and issue them out based on registration and/or GPS data? Or do all starlink customers worldwide get issued US IPs?
yardie
Starlink IPs are assigned to the closest ground station. I used Starlink during a transatlantic crossing. The first half of the trip our IP address was based in Madrid. At about 2/3 of the way it changed to a Virginia based IP. And as we got closer to the Caribbean a Miami based IP.
fluoridation
Note that there's no such thing as "US IPs". GeoIP works by induction: "OK, this operator is in France, so all addresses in this range are probably in France; these ones are probably close to Paris, which is where this internal router is;" etc.
If I had to guess, you probably get the address of the base station whose signals reflect off the satellite, which is probably not very far from you, given the satellites are in LEO.
EDIT: I meant to say that you get an address in the ground station's subnetwork. I don't know if Starlink uses NAT.
kube-system
GeoIP works by many different means. There are many different GeoIP databases which contain different data based on different opinions. Some are voluntarily reported, some by ping timings, some based on the registered address of the owner of the block of IPs, some based on business records, some based on third party reporting of other direct measurements, etc.
Starlink, in particular, reports their base station locations: https://geoip.starlinkisp.net/feed.csv
alt227
I hadnt even considered that there were multiple ground stations. I just assumed the Starlink satelites would just all bounce the signal back to base in the US.
dmix
> Starlink is not licensed to operate in Myanmar
> Myanmar’s military has shut down a major online scam operation near the border with Thailand, detaining more than 2,000 people and seizing dozens of Starlink satellite Internet terminals
So Myanmar seized some terminals and Starlink disabled the accounts?
noselasd
Yes, seems so - but they shut down a lot more terminals too, not just the seized ones.
And it seems the biggest reason for them shutting down the terminals was pressure from US Senator Maggie Hassan to shut down scam centers, not the government in Myanmar.
shellfishgene
About 80 were seized in raids, SpaceX disabled 2500.
lofaszvanitt
Oh, the free internet.
whatsupdog
These scams are getting really really out of hand. I mean the ones out of India were pretty bad, but at least there was no slavery/human trafficking/torture involved. Also, most of the Myanmar ones are "pig butchering", so they even play with the victims emotions for a long long time, and it's much much more difficult to get your life back on track after being scammed by someone you thought was the love of your life.
contrarian1234
The ones in Myanmar target the Sinosphere. They kidnap Chinese tourists and enslave them. It's run by Taiwanese and Chinese mafia. It's possible they have native English speakers there.. I haven't heard of it before though.
notahacker
It certainly started focusing on the Sinosphere, but the DW investigation last year talked to Africans who had been persuaded of "job opportunities" at KK Park, who would be far more likely to be fluent in English than Chinese
gethly
Musk getting political again? Oh no, what a surprise...
guywithahat
I mean this seems to be tied to the Chinese human trafficking/slave call centers, and the terminals are not legal in the country. I suppose everything is politically complex, but I wouldn't really call this "getting political". The US just confiscated 15 billion in bitcoin from what seems to be the same group (although I think there's some discrepancy between what they're doing and how they're doing it).
1-6
Elon Musk envisions a utopian world where there's prosperity for all. While in theory it's a doable plan (like ending world hunger), he's very naive to think it's possible to do in practice.
Jeremy1026
Does he though? Feels like he envisions a utopian world where he is the leader and the rest of the population needs to accommodate his every whim.
IAmBroom
Well, that's one of the utopian visions he markets.
In practice Elon seems to envision a world that worships Elon.
pavlov
Now do the Texan scam center called Tesla, Inc.
(Former Tesla customer here)
benbojangles
i would prefer to go there and visit to find out the truth before i pass judgement
The title is underselling the nuance—there's the entire Myanmar civil war hiding behind the word "allegedly". The group in power claims a group trying to overthrow them is operating scam centers (they deny it); this SpaceX intervention cuts off communications on a large scale, presumably aiding one side or the other in some unclear way.
> "“Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, the spokesperson for the military government, charged in a statement Monday night that the top leaders of the Karen National Union, an armed ethnic organization opposed to army rule, were involved in the scam projects at KK Park,” the AP wrote. The Karen National Union is “part of the larger armed resistance movement in Myanmar’s civil war” and “deny any involvement in the scams.”"