Security
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From Haven to Hub: Thailand’s New Trade of Transnational Repression
For decades, dissidents and activists in Southeast Asia have found reprieve and refuge within Thailand’s borders, which once served as a shield against persecution and unlawful silencing. Yet a single coup in 2014 enabled Thai General Prayuth Chan-ocha’s rise and consolidation of power, who tore this veil down with the…
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The Wet Foundations of the Digital Age
The global race for artificial intelligence is usually framed as a battle over chips, code, and national security. But behind the scenes, the AI economy runs on something far more basic: water. From cooling data centers to manufacturing semiconductors, modern computing depends on enormous and growing volumes of freshwater. As…
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China’s Crackdown and Myanmar’s Scam Hubs: Inside the Rise and Fall of a Borderland Crime Economy
For years, Myanmar’s borderlands functioned as a shadow economy where cyber fraud, human trafficking, and political power quietly converged. Scam hubs like Laukkaing and Shwe Kokko did not arise from state collapse alone—they were actively enabled by protection deals with militias, tolerance from military elites, and alignment with China’s regional…
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Security by Solidarity: The Shifting Scapegoating of Chinese-Indonesians in Modern Indonesia
As Indonesia’s working class began to unravel the entrenched corruption embedded in its national legislature in early August 2025, memories of the racialized violence of 1998 surged back into public consciousness– years when the ethnic Chinese community bore the brunt of civil unrest. Yet amidst these echoes of the past,…
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How Modern Chinese Surveillance and Censorship Prevail on Self-Regulation
Modern Chinese censorship and surveillance do not rely on overt coercion but instead operate by constantly reminding citizens that what they say online is never private. While violence through physical coercion is rare, knowledge of its possibility is enough to instill caution. Living under such an unspoken threat fosters a…
