A Thai perspective on satellite internet and the regional scam-center crisis
For more than two years, Thailand has been on the front line of one of Southeast Asia’s most damaging criminal industries: the scam compounds that line its borders with Myanmar and Cambodia. The uncomfortable fact is that Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has become one of the tools keeping these criminal operations online. This makes a clear and urgent case for Starlink to implement stronger, faster, and more transparent controls over how its technology is used along Thailand’s borders.
What Thai officials have said
Rangsiman Rome is chair of the House of Representatives Committee on National Security and Border Affairs. Few Thai officials have examined the role of Starlink in this crisis as closely, or as candidly, as Rangsiman Rome. His account, drawn from an extended interview on the subject, lays out both why the problem persists and what a workable fix would look like.
Rangsiman is careful to note that Starlink itself is not the villain. He describes low-Earth-orbit satellite internet as a genuine advance that removes old limits on connectivity — technology that has let displaced people in Myanmar’s refugee camps stay connected to the outside world during wartime. His concern is narrower and more specific: that the same qualities making Starlink valuable for humanitarian use — portability, independence from local infrastructure, coverage in places with no other option — are being deliberately exploited by transnational scam networks. He points out that entire scam compounds are now visibly covered in Starlink dishes, and that even when Thailand cuts internet access on its own side of the border, these operations simply keep running on satellite links Thailand cannot touch.
Rangsiman argues the fix is technically straightforward. Once Thai intelligence has pinpointed the coordinates of a scam compound, he believes the government should be able to pass that location to SpaceX and have the specific Starlink terminals in that building disabled. Based on informal conversations he has had with senior foreign officials, he understands that SpaceX is capable of doing this quickly once given the right coordination — his sense is that, left uncoordinated, SpaceX likely has little visibility into who is actually using its terminals or why. He also notes a practical advantage regional authorities have here that they don’t have with other smuggled contraband: unlike narcotics networks that use small-scale couriers and civilian vehicles specifically to stay invisible from above, scam operations are hard to hide. They are large buildings bristling with multiple dishes, because a single terminal cannot support an entire compound’s operations — which means they are relatively easy to spot from aerial or satellite imagery and cross-reference against security intelligence.
On the question of legal responsibility, Rangsiman takes a measured position rather than an accusatory one. He does not think SpaceX should be held liable simply for providing a communications tool, any more than a Thai telecom operator should be blamed for every crime committed using its network. But he draws a clear line: once the Thai government has formally notified SpaceX of a specific scam location and the company still fails to act, that, in his view, is where accountability should begin. He also points to Thailand’s regulator, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), noting that Thai signal towers along the border sometimes overreach into neighboring territory in ways that could also be tightened — and that while Thailand’s authority stops at its own soil, the government can still approach SpaceX as an injured party seeking cooperation against equipment it believes is being used illegally.
Rangsiman has raised the issue repeatedly through parliamentary channels, including committee sessions specifically addressing the tools scam networks rely on, and says he even attempted to contact Elon Musk directly, without success. He believes the more realistic channel runs through Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, which already maintains contact with SpaceX, and argues the ministry should make the Starlink issue a clear priority. Notably, he also identifies a source of leverage: SpaceX is seeking formal authorization to operate Starlink legally inside Thailand, which gives the Thai government a meaningful bargaining position — cooperation on shutting down scam-linked terminals, in his view, should be a factor in whether that authorization is ultimately granted.
Prasert Jantararuangtong, Minister of Digital Economy and Society, has confirmed that as Thailand has cut ground-based broadband and power to scam-affected border areas, criminal groups have simply switched to satellite connections instead. He has noted that low-Earth-orbit satellite coverage extends across the border regardless of what Thailand does domestically, that equipment is regularly smuggled in, and that his ministry has seized multiple shipments of Starlink hardware bound for fraud operations. He has made curbing this satellite loophole a top ministry priority.
Pol Gen Thatchai Pitaneelaboot, who has led both the Royal Thai Police’s Cyber Crime Suppression Centre and its Anti-Human Trafficking Centre, has stated that Starlink connections in known scam hubs roughly doubled between 2024 and mid-2025, even as Thailand pushed ahead with power, fuel, and internet cutoffs. He has estimated that as many as 100,000 people may still be working inside these compounds, and has acknowledged that smuggled fuel and satellite equipment are undermining Thailand’s enforcement efforts. He has confirmed that Thai authorities have engaged foreign counterparts specifically to press Starlink to restrict service in border areas, saying it will otherwise remain very difficult to stop these operations.
Pol Lt Gen Jirabhop Bhuridej, assistant commissioner-general of the Royal Thai Police, has personally overseen seizures of Starlink dishes tied to scam networks relocating across the Myanmar-Laos border, and has represented Thai police in joint international operations with Meta, Microsoft, Coinbase, the US Department of Justice, and Starlink itself — operations that led to thousands of illegally used Starlink devices being disconnected, more than a million fraudulent social media accounts removed, dozens of arrests, and millions of dollars in criminal assets frozen. He has stressed that transnational fraud cannot be solved by any single country or company acting alone, and that sustained, structured cooperation is essential.
What Starlink should do
Based on what these officials have described, four measures would make the biggest difference, offering concrete and achievable solutions rather than a blanket demand to withdraw the service:
- Build a working coordinate-referral channel with Thai authorities. When Thai intelligence identifies the location of a scam compound, SpaceX should have a fast, reliable process — via the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society — to review and disable the Starlink terminals registered or operating at that site.
- Increase visibility into who is using each terminal, and why, so that unusual concentrations of activations at a single site — can be flagged before, not after, a compound becomes fully operational.
- Treat formal government notification as a trigger for action, consistent with the accountability standard Rangsiman proposes: once a specific, verified scam location is reported, continued inaction should carry consequences, including for SpaceX’s pending request to operate legally inside Thailand.
- Sustain and expand the cooperation already shown to work. The joint takedown operations Thai police have taken part in demonstrate that Starlink can disable large numbers of misused devices when it chooses to act — that capacity now needs to become routine, not occasional.
Thai officials, across parliament, the digital ministry, and the police, are not asking Starlink to abandon a technology that has genuinely helped displaced and remote communities. They are asking the company to close a specific, identifiable gap that criminal networks have learned to exploit — and, as Rangsiman notes, Thailand has real leverage to make that happen.
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