Guest contributor

James Shwe

On May 19, a little‑noticed hearing in Washington quietly opened a new front in Myanmar’s struggle for freedom. 

The U.S. House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party held a hearing on “China‑linked scam networks” and released a major report, Crime, Corruption, and Power: CCP‑Linked Transnational Crime and the Rise of a Distributed Threat to U.S. National Security.

The message is blunt: industrial‑scale scam centers across Southeast Asia, including Myanmar, are no longer seen as “ordinary crime.” They are now treated as a national security threat to the United States. That shift creates both risks and opportunities for our revolution.

The report refers to Myanmar’s military regime under the formal label of the State Administration Council (SAC), because that was the nominal structure during the period it analyzed. 

Since the sham “elections” and subsequent rebranding exercises, the junta has tried to morph into something that looks less like a post-coup council and more like a conventional government—with new names, new cabinets, and new propaganda.

But the core reality has not changed. The same military leadership, the same patronage networks, and the same militia‑based war economy remain in place. 

Only the label has shifted. What the report really describes is not a passing committee of generals, but a criminalized military regime that keeps changing its signboard while preserving its business model.

That business model now clearly includes scam centers.

 A conflict‑embedded scam state

The report’s Myanmar chapter describes a “conflict‑embedded criminal governance” system. Scam compounds in militia‑controlled border areas operate under the protection of forces aligned with the military regime and its Border Guard Forces, whatever name the junta currently uses for itself. 

These actors provide land, guns and impunity. The regime still controls the telecom, border and banking chokepoints these hubs depend on. Scam revenues then help the generals and their cronies evade sanctions and finance war against the Myanmar people.

U.S. officials testified that this “scamdemic” is stripping at least $10 billion dollars a year from Americans, while trafficking victims from Asia and beyond are beaten and coerced into online fraud from compounds in Cambodia, Myanmar and elsewhere. 

In Myanmar, U.S. authorities have already moved to seize cryptocurrency and even satellite internet equipment linked to scam operations.

Changing the junta’s job title does not alter these facts. Whether it calls itself “SAC,” or a “caretaker government,” or a “civilianized” administration after sham polls, it remains the political center of a war economy that shelters and profits from scam hubs.

Why this matters for the revolution

The report urges Congress to treat this ecosystem as its own high‑priority category and to pass specific legislation, including the Dismantle Foreign Scam Syndicates Act (H.R. 5490) and related measures in the Senate. 

It supports a permanent Scam Center Strike Force inside U.S. law‑enforcement, and it explicitly contemplates targeting foreign enablers—officials, militias, business elites and jurisdictions that host and protect scam hubs.

If Myanmar is recognized as such an “enabler,” it gives Washington fresh legal and political tools to hit regime‑linked actors with sanctions, visa bans, asset freezes and financial restrictions tied directly to scam centers—regardless of whether the generals present themselves as SAC, a “transitional” authority, or something else. 

It also strengthens the case for working with non‑regime actors—like the National Unity Government (NUG), ethnic administrations and resistance groups—who have already shown they can help expose and dismantle compounds more responsibly than the military hierarchy.

At the same time, there is danger. The regime has hired lobbyists in Washington to push for greater “normalization.” They will try to exploit the post‑election rebranding, arguing that the U.S. must work with this supposedly new “government” to fight scams. 

But the report itself warns that using counter‑scam cooperation to legitimize regime “law‑enforcement” would mean rewarding the very actors who supplied the protection and infrastructure in the first place.

What Myanmar’s democracy movement should do now

This is a moment to act, not to observe.

• In Washington: Myanmar diaspora should brief Congressional offices using this report and the hearing record, stressing that the same military system—whatever name it claims after the sham elections—remains at the heart of Myanmar’s scam state. They should urge passage of H.R. 5490 and related bills, and push for Myanmar to be treated as a scam‑enabling jurisdiction where the evidence supports it. They should also warn the State Department that deeper engagement with the “rebranded” junta on scams risks normalizing a criminal structure, and that cooperation should instead prioritize non‑regime actors.
• On the ground: Civil society, ethnic administrations and resistance groups should continue to safely document compound locations, ownership, militia protection, payment channels and connectivity providers, and share this through secure channels to trusted partners who can feed it into sanctions and criminal‑case design. When groups like the Karen National Union (KNU) demobilize compounds while preserving evidence and protecting victims, they show what legitimate governance looks like in practice—something no rebranded junta can offer.

Scam centers may seem far from the villages being bombed, but they are part of the same system that keeps the generals in power—before and after their fake elections. If we are strategic, this new U.S. focus on scam centers can become another lever to cut off the regime’s money and legitimacy, and to elevate those in Myanmar who are trying to build a state based on law, not on crime.

James Shwe is a Myanmar American professional engineer and advocate for democracy in Myanmar, affiliated with the Los Angeles Myanmar Movement.

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