Thailand’s army has recast its deadly clash with Cambodia as a battle against cybercriminals, adding a new motive for bombing runs across the border that it says are aimed at rooting out scammers.
Calling the strikes a “war against the scam army,” a military division involved in the border fight said this week it’s on the front line against the global threat of transnational crime syndicates, which operate across neighboring Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
Thailand’s new tone draws together two simmering crises in Southeast Asia: the border war between neighbors that has killed dozens and displaced half a million people and a sprawling scam ecosystem that has swindled billions of dollars primarily in what are referred to as pig-butchering and call-center schemes.
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