Trump Derangement International

AFTER one of my recent interviews, during the off-the-record, off-camera chit-chat with my guest, when the topic turned (as it does in almost every conversation I have here, whether I want it to or not) to the current chaos in the US, he made the comment, “I like Trump, and I think we [the country] can work with him, because he’s a businessman.”

That sort of statement is the kind of thing that makes me facepalm so hard my hand comes out the back of my head. This is a great guy; I like him. He’s very well-connected, and offers good insights on Philippine politics and business, and is an especially good source of expertise on all aspects of Filipino-Chinese relations. He writes a couple of columns; one in English for one of our competitor newspapers, and one in the local language for one of the tabloids. He can legitimately be described as “an opinion leader,” especially since those tabloids have a huge circulation among the common folk.

In short, this is someone who should know better than to rest on the glib – and of course, completely erroneous – perception that Donald Jackass Trump is a “businessman.” However, this is not at all unusual among Filipinos.

Trump is popular among Filipinos – Filipino-Americans overwhelmingly voted for him in 2024 – for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it is the result of limited information. Mainstream media in the US, and to a large extent, the international media that we pick up here normalizes Trump by not going into detail about what he says or does. For example, all of his ridiculously illegal, insane executive orders are reported at face value with absolutely no additional context. “President Trump today signed an executive order to dah dah dah...” and that’s it. And he’s signing a lot of executive orders, so for the Filipino news consumer here, the impression he or she gets is that a) this is normally how a president does things, and b) Trump is being particularly energetic with his presidenting. Most Filipinos have this weird idol complex with the US to some degree – along a spectrum stretching from “benefit of the doubt” to “full-on colonial mentality” – and so assume that whatever the US government and its leader are doing, it must be right and proper.

To be fair, not everyone thinks that way; there are some who absolutely loathe anything that has anything to do with the US, and others who, being capable of critical thinking, view things with an appropriate degree of skepticism. But all of these people constitute a very small minority of the population.

The second reason is that Filipinos are not individualists; they like to be included, and to feel like they’re part of something exclusive. My teenage daughter calls it the “pick me” attitude; I describe it as cultish. Membership in a fraternity, or some kind of club – every make and model of car sold here has an “owner’s club,” for example – or some professional society, or even an actual cult like the Iglesia Ni Cristo, Kingdom of Jesus Christ, or Jesus Is Lord megachurches, defines a person’s identity. Like it or not, MAGA attracts people like that, because it offers a personal brand one can borrow. Something for the Democrats to consider if they ever get the chance to oppose the neofascists in another election; the “we include everyone” thing just doesn’t work for some people, because if you’re just like everyone, you’re not special. Yes, I realize there’s a big irony in all of this, but most Filipinos don’t, and won’t, even if you explain it to them.

Related to that aspect of the Filipino personality is the unfortunate fact that identity prejudice is hard-wired into the culture and most people. Again, this is an irony, because in some respects the Philippines seems like an egalitarian kind of place. After all, there have been two women presidents, women are significantly well-represented in all levels of government, in business, and in the professional occupations. LGBTQI+ people are currently fighting for some expanded legal rights (such as legal marriages), but as a practical matter are cheerfully accepted without a second thought in society, and do not face impediments in jobs or business or day-to-day living.

But, just under this veneer of civility lies some deep-seated prejudices – real racism, to put it bluntly. The Filipinos treat us White people like VIPs, especially if we’re Americans (again, it’s the little brother complex). Chinese or Indians get a much cooler reception. Black people are treated shabbily, unless they’re one of the dozen or so naturalized American NBA washouts who play in the basketball league here. I live in a neighborhood where there are a number of African residents, here because they provide French language services in the many call centers nearby, and the treatment they receive and the way they’re spoken to in most ordinary situations is shameful. I swear, one of these days I’m going to slap the rude little bitch behind the counter at the 7-11 for talking down her snoot at the guy from Cameroon. He has a Master’s and speaks four languages; you’re an 8th-grade dropout and have four kids from three different guys. Show some normal courtesy, you insufferable skank.

So, when it comes right down to it, the proud white supremacy of Trump and his MAGA cult has a great deal of appeal. Obviously, Filipinos aren’t white, but I believe that literally does not register with most of them who count themselves as members of the cult. For those who do realize they’re the wrong color, they seem to feel that if they are simply enthusiastic and loud enough, they’ll be accepted.

The obvious question that anyone should ask, and that I ask myself, is why should anyone care about any of this? It’s simple, really: Evil is evil, and it should not be supported by anyone, no matter how inconsequential that support may be. And in the case of the Philippines, and the Filipino-American population, it certainly is at least a little bit above inconsequential. Trump directly earns at least a couple million a year from the licensing for the Trump Tower in Makati (and let me tell you, a more hideous, garishly over-decorated building you have never seen), and his popularity has helped his top Elon Musk make inroads, with a recently opened Tesla center and a license to offer his shitty Starlink internet. The material advantages of Filipino support for Trump must be broken; turning their admiration for him into the revulsion morality demands will help to break his spirit, and contribute to ending him just a little bit faster.

 

Tesla is evil and must be destroyed, and here’s how you do it

THE real target, of course, is not Tesla Motors, but rather the vicious, planet-scale fascist parasite who leads the company. If there were no Elon Musk, then Tesla would be just another car company; perhaps a bit bland, but otherwise a normal brand with its good points and bad points. That, however, is not the case; Tesla is evil and must be destroyed, because Elon Musk is evil and must be destroyed; and Tesla is Elon Musk’s gravy train, the basis of his obscene wealth. Kill Tesla and you kill Elon Musk – figuratively, of course – by removing, or at least reducing to a dismissible level, the only thing that supports the level of attention he commands and influence he wields, which is his wealth. Being irrelevant, in fact, is the preferred fate for an obnoxious little narcissistic twat like Elon Musk, because to someone like that it is a fate worse than death.

For the record, I am not recommending or urging anyone to take any actions described below that may be illegal. I am simply describing how someone who has concluded that Elon Musk is evil and must be destroyed, and who may have a strong desire to take direct and effective action based on that knowledge might do so. You make your own choices about whether your actions are right or wrong, because I’m not your dad. And along those lines, I have no knowledge about anyone making use of the information herein, or planning to make use of the information, and I will have no such knowledge in the future, either. So don’t ask.

For the curious, this information is based primarily on my own knowledge of how the automotive business works. I spent about 18 years in various positions with a major automaker before I started doing what I do now, and while my focus was mostly on logistics and aftersales, I did receive extensive training in other aspects of the business, such as sales, financing, and accounting. Whatever gaps I discovered in my knowledge as I was putting this together I tried to fill in with as up-to-date research as I could find.

Okay, enough with the preamble, here’s the good stuff:

1. It’s all about sales: Sales is everything. If Tesla doesn’t sell cars, Tesla doesn’t survive as a company. For an EV manufacturer like Tesla, declining (or nonexistent) sales cuts two ways; first, it loses the direct revenue from the sale of its product, and second, it loses the income from tradeable clean energy/carbon credits that are created by sales. For Tesla, that secondary income amounted to about $2.8 billion last year.

This is the one aspect of all of this that the growing Tesla Takedown movement gets exactly right, because the effect the movement’s activities lead to is to convince a growing number of would-be Tesla customers that purchasing a Tesla carries with it an extremely high reputational risk. Keep doing that, and do it some more.

2. Teslas that are already on the road should be considered fair game: To be clear, this means vandalizing privately owned Tesla vehicles to the extent that they require repairs, or are destroyed. This is a dicey proposition, particularly because of the risk of injury to people, which is something that should be avoided, and because engaging in destructive violence is distasteful to many people, as well as illegal just about anywhere on the planet. However, a results-oriented approach demands it be considered, for two reasons. First, the risk of loss or damage by itself will discourage many potential Tesla customers, further depressing sales. Second, the reality of loss or damage drives up insurance rates, and in some cases, leads to coverage being withdrawn altogether. This greatly increases the costs of ownership of a Tesla, which becomes another disincentive to buying one.

3. Tesla inventory must NOT be harmed in any way: Many of the incidents of vandalism of Tesla vehicles that have occurred so far have been directed at vehicles Tesla still owns, i.e. those sitting at dealerships or on factory lots, out of a misguided belief that this is somehow “better” than attacking cars belonging to ordinary consumers. It may seem counterintuitive, but this is precisely the wrong approach.

Unlike most car companies, Tesla sells directly to customers rather than through a network of independently owned dealerships. In a conventional dealership arrangement, unsold cars (i.e., still owned by the company) are consigned to dealerships, with the carrying costs of that inventory being passed on in the form of flooring fees, which are also usually high enough to compensate for the depreciation of the vehicle during the period it remains unsold. Under the Tesla system, however, it has to bear the carrying costs and depreciation. True, unsold inventory is accounted as an asset, but it is one that steadily loses value; whereas a conventional dealership arrangement allows the manufacturer to make up for that value loss in the charges paid by dealers, Tesla has to periodically write down the value of its unsold inventory.

I’m not going to take up a lot of space explaining the ins and outs of that, but if you’re curious, Tesla’s own explanation of its inventory valuation where it says as much is on page 63 of its 2024 10-K filing.

Unsold inventory is a terminal cancer to Tesla, because it can only be written down to the point where its expected future selling price is equal to the cost of producing the finished product; at that point, it has to be written off, or in other words, ceases to be an asset. Up until the point when Tesla’s sales started to really lag – which really started after the introduction of Cybertruck Wank Panzer, and when Elon began to reveal his full personal douchebaggery through Twitter – Tesla’s inventory management system was actually pretty good, more or less a modified version of the system Toyota uses (believe me, this dickhead has never invented or innovated a damn thing). However, the tolerances in that sort of system are extremely tight, and once the demand forecast is just a little higher than it should’ve been and inventory starts to pile up, so do the costs, and the size of the inevitable write-downs or write-offs. It also doesn’t help Tesla’s situation that its vehicles apparently depreciate as much as three times faster than the average for other automobiles.

The salvation for Tesla in its present circumstances is to have someone come along and destroy the unsold inventory, because then it’s insured (industrial-grade insurance for vehicles in inventory is not the same thing as insurance for vehicles in the hands of consumers). It’s still an asset loss, but one that is mostly compensated by insurance coverage; the difference, or net loss, between the estimated realizable revenue from sale and the insurance payout is not large enough that burning up a dozen, a hundred, or even a thousand unsold Teslas is going to make a significant dent in the company’s financial health.

So, juicy targets though they may be, leave the Teslas that are still in Tesla’s possession alone. They are doing the company far more damage sitting there in unsold condition than they would be if they were in flames.

 

My unspoken opinion of that rat-bastard Rodrigo Duterte

Duterte (L) in happier times with his close friend and "spiritual adviser," cult leader Apollo Quiboloy. Duterte is now in the hands of the International Criminal Court, while Quiboloy is jailed on charges of human trafficking, sexual assault, fraud, and money laundering here in the Philippines, and is wanted on similar charges in the US. Incredibly, both are still candidates for offices in the May, 2025 elections; Duterte is running for his old seat as mayor of Davao City, while Quiboloy is running for the Senate. 

***

IN my Manila Times column for Thursday, March 13, I put aside the topic that I had intended to discuss (subsidized electricity rates), and decided to ride the tsunami of the local news cycle, as the biggest story to hit this country in years happened on Tuesday. That, of course, was the arrest and speedy extradition of former president Rodrigo Duterte on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, where he has been charged with crimes against humanity for his bloody "war on drugs," first as Davao City mayor, and then during the first half of his term as president, between 2016 and 2019. 

Duterte, in a panic over potentially being hauled before the international tribunal for overseeing the murders of between 6,000 (the official government tally) and 20,000 people (the number claimed by human rights groups), withdrew the Philippines from the ICC in 2019. But, due to his habit of doing things in a half-assed manner and surrounding himself with equally doltish advisers, he neglected to read the fine print of the Rome Statute, under which the ICC reserves the right to assume jurisdiction over crimes committed prior to a country's exit from it. Nor did he withdraw the Philippines from the Interpol compact, meaning that the government would remain duty-bound to honor any warrants served by Interpol, which is exactly what happened this week. 

Early on in my career as a commentator here -- those interesting, low-income days when I was still freelancing, treating my own blog as an actual job, and doing radio -- I had no compunction at all about commenting freely on the state of politics and politicians here in the Philippines, but in the years since I've "gone mainstream," so to speak, I've become more circumspect about doing that. Thus, in my Thursday column I confined myself to addressing the mechanics of Duterte's arrest and removal from the country -- all of which happened within the span of about 12 hours -- rather than discussing him or his crimes. 

I should say "alleged crimes," but I personally saw bodies in the street, and watched the news clips, along with everyone else, where he straight-up said that he would have all the drug pushers and users killed, so yeah, I'm pretty sure he's guilty. A lot of those people weren't "drug personalities," either. 

Just because I don't express an opinion in my column because I deem that an inappropriate platform for it doesn't mean I don't have an opinion. The majority of my audience here in the Philippines might not appreciate or find any value in my perceptions about Rodrigo Duterte and the people in his orbit, but the rest of the world ought to know who this guy really is. 

Rodrigo Duterte is a pig and an intentional misanthrope, a bully to his core who delights in making people uncomfortable. He is not unintelligent, but is probably best described as impatient and incurious, bored by technicalities or complex problems. His slovenly appearance and rough way of speaking is a political act, one he honed through long years as a mayor in his hometown of Davao because it resonates with the hicks, and practiced for so long that it became his actual personality. His children are all cast from the same pretentious "every-man" mold as well, and are equally boorish, especially eldest daughter Sara, who is the Vice President of the Philippines. She is currently facing an impeachment trial in the Senate -- set to begin in July -- for embezzling millions in funds from her office and from the Department of Education, where she served as Secretary for a time before having a public falling-out with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. after questions began to be raised about the missing funds. Her response to Congressional efforts to investigate the matter was, at one point when one of her staff was detained for refusing to answer questions, to post a terrifyingly insane video rant to her social media wherein she threatened to have President and Mrs. Marcos assassinated. 

Sara's two brothers, one the current mayor of Davao and the other a congressman, are equally as charming, as is her little sister Victoria -- known as "Kitty" -- who is all of 18 years old and has gained notoriety in the past days for going completely apeshit online about her father's arrest. That has been tempered somewhat, however, by some enterprising Gen-Z non-fans of hers (I am rather proud to say that my daughter is one of them), who uncovered a number of "Kitty's" social media posts in which she extols the excessive use of marijuana. This has earned her a new nickname, "Wake & Bake," after one of her posts, which I believe was on TikTok. For those who didn't know, possession of marijuana is strictly forbidden here in the Philippines, and so this is a particularly bad look for the daughter of "kill all the drug users" Duterte. 

As far as Duterte himself is concerned, the allegations in the charges from the ICC are all true; he did explicitly order law enforcement to liberally use deadly force in pursuit of drug offenders, promised protection from legal consequences for them, and authorized a bounty system for each suspect killed or captured. He did apply violent methods against political opponents by tagging them as being connected to the drug business, and he turned a blind eye to vigilantes at the national level. While mayor of Davao in the early 2000s, he actually organized these into the infamous "DDS" -- Davao Death Squad -- and while he wasn't so overt about it as president, he made it clear enough that the police should not waste their time investigating vigilante killings. Virtually none of them, which may number from several hundred to several thousand, have ever been solved. 

Duterte also publicly admitted, while president, that he had personally killed several (the number seemed to change with each retelling) criminal suspects while he was the City Prosecutor and then Mayor in Davao; and in an admission that rattled even his diehard supporters, he confessed to having sexually molested his family's housekeeper when he was a teenager. The way that particular story was told strongly implied that she was not the only woman to have suffered that through the years, a notion that was only reinforced by his close friendship with and staunch support for Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, a Davao-based cult leader who, after hearing a performance by Billy Graham in Korea in the late 1980s, decided he was the son of God. American readers can make of that what they will. 

It is hardly possible to separate Duterte from his drug war; it was, after all, the centerpiece of his administration, at least before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the single issue he had campaigned on in the run up to the 2016 elections. But if one sets that aside for the moment and examines the rest of his record as president, it was thoroughly unimpressive; of the four presidents who have served during my time here, he was by far the worst. Although he was not as authoritarian as he is sometimes characterized, particularly by foreign media, he was by no means a champion of democracy; as president, he was simply what he always had been, a provincial mayor accustomed to managing relatively simple concerns, and relying on a combination of a reputation buoyed by shallow populism and cronyism to do so. It didn't scale up to a national level well at all, and as a result, Duterte distinguished himself as a poor administrator and even worse policymaker. 

His Cabinet was a collection of some of the most laughably ineffective yahoos and grifters this country, even with its relatively low standards, has seen for in a long time, and was only saved from being a complete disaster by a few perhaps accidentally good staffing picks, such as Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, and Budget Secretary -- later governor of the central bank -- Benjamin Diokno. Whatever they accomplished, however, was overshadowed by the farcical performance of some of his other appointees, such as Alfonso Cusi, a political party bureaucrat, as Energy Secretary, and Arthur Tugade, a lawyer and business speculator, as Transportation Secretary. Duterte's choice for Health Secretary, and the point man for the government during the Covid-19 pandemic, Francisco Duque III, had at least held the position before, but had spent more time during his years out of government service in the real estate business rather than medicine, which became apparent in the ham-fisted way the pandemic was handled. The Philippines had the world's longest lockdown -- about five months in total -- and suffered one of the most severe economic recessions in Asia. As part of the lingering fallout from the Covid-19 nightmare, Duque, along with a former official of the Office of Management and Budget, is still facing charges of graft for the improper transfer (and implied skimming) of 41 billion pesos of Health Department funds during the pandemic. 

What comes next in the strange saga of Rodrigo Duterte is unclear; but given the glacial speed at which the ICC works, it is doubtful he will leave the Netherlands alive. He is 79 years old and in poor health, and even though he can expect adequate medical care, his surviving the three or four years, at a minimum, it will take for there to be any resolution in his case is far from certain. No matter; there was something satisfying in seeing him brought to heel, and as an added bonus, his removal to the Netherlands caused most of his toxic family and coterie of thuggish buffoons to follow him. Out of sight, out of mind doesn't do people with political aspirations much good here, and so there is the happy prospect that this particularly unpleasant political clan has just been put out of business. There are still too many others, here in this country and in the world at large, and unlike some people, I have little hope that this one arrest has any greater significance as a sign of the possible end awaiting the likes of Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, or Benjamin Netanyahu. But if it's a small w instead of a big W, it's still a win, and I'll be happy enough to enjoy it for its own sake.

 

  

 

Starlink in the crosshairs

MY Manila Times columns from February 27 and March 11. Starlink has recently been granted a license to operate in the Philippines, and that is something that should be stopped. I’m not done yet, but these two columns are a decent start.

Comelec supports fascism with Starlink plan (February 27, 2025)

LAST week, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced that it would be deploying “about 7,000” of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet stations for use in transmitting voting results in the upcoming May elections. Whatever excuses Comelec may provide for making this ill-advised decision, an obvious conclusion that can be drawn from it is that it is apparently now government policy is to materially embrace fascism, at least when doing so may result in a small bit of convenience.

According to Comelec commissioner George Erwin Garcia, the Starlink units would be used in areas identified as having only one telecommunications provider or none at all. In justifying the choice of Starlink, Garcia was quoted by news reports as saying, “Starlink will provide around 200 megabits (Mbps) per second bandwidth, ensuring that election returns can be transmitted in real time,” adding that he expected that the results of the May polls could be provided with “unprecedented speed.”

I would certainly not accuse Garcia of lying about that, but he certainly seems to be uncritically repeating whatever sales pitch he was given by the Starlink people. So far, there have been no published tests that indicate Starlink operates reliably at anywhere near 200 Mbps. Starlink’s own website for business customers, who can presumably pay more for higher speeds, only advertises download speeds of between 40 and 200 Mbps, upload speeds of 8-25 Mbps, and latency (the time it takes to connect to the network in order to upload or download something) of between 20 and 60 milliseconds. The most recent test results I could find online were from late July of last year, wherein Starlink’s median download speed was 48.14 Mbps – about half the 94.42 Mbps of the country’s fixed broadband operators – its median upload speed was an equally unimpressive 12.63 Mbps, compared with 94.13 for its ground-bound competitors, and its average latency was 50 ms, roughly twice that of the fixed broadband providers.

Anecdotally, on the three different occasions I have had a chance to connect to Starlink in rural areas of the country, most recently in Palawan, the performance of the network has been no better than a weak cellular data signal. On my latest trip when I needed to be online to do a bit of actual work, I could not connect for more than a few moments at a time; using my phone as a wi-fi hotspot with my regular old, technically boring Smart data signal saved the day.

Certainly, in those areas where there is no internet connectivity whatsoever, a slow and intermittent Starlink connection is better than nothing. But the unimpressive performance of Starlink generally, and the uncertainty about its reliability in some places may very well raise questions about whether or not something as important as voting tabulations should be entrusted to it.

Those questions may become even more pointed when the cost of the system is considered, which as far as I could determine from a diligent online search, has not been officially disclosed. Back in mid-2022, when the Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT) was working on an initiative to provide internet connectivity with Starlink in rural areas, one of the challenges DICT said it was trying to resolve was the budget, as the equipment for each ground unit – the lower-cost residential type – cost $599 (or P34,660), with each having a monthly subscription fee of $99 (P5,729). If Comelec opts for the presumably better-performing Starlink equipment for business customers, those units cost P153,942 each, according to Starlink’s website, with monthly connection plans starting at P3,920. With 7,000 units needed, an estimate of the total cost for Comelec’s plan thus ranges from about P283 million, up to about P1.1 billion.

Surprisingly, security is not one of the biggest concerns with using the Starlink system, although Musk has candidly said on a number of occasions that the system gathers a large amount of data which he sees no problem with using as he sees fit. Recently, a conspiracy theory has made the rounds in the US that Musk used Starlink to manipulate the results of last November’s presidential election. While Musk is the target of several lawsuits accusing him of election interference, those pertain to his use of his Twitter (now called X) social media platform to spread disinformation; Starlink was actually not used by election officials in the US – as transmitting results over the internet is generally considered unsafe – save for in one county in California. Even then, so long as the data being transmitted is securely encrypted, there is not much that Starlink can do with it. It can collect geolocation and time of use data, and that certainly will be collected and stored by Musk’s minions, for whatever purpose it might serve, but the actual voting data should be safe, provided Comelec does the rest of its job properly.

Nevertheless, Comelec’s decision to willingly hand over hundreds of millions of pesos in public funds to the personal coffers of an avowed fascist is questionable in the extreme. Not just any right-wing nutjob, but an avowed fascist who, apart from being in the midst of carrying out an authoritarian coup in the US, has engineered the sudden cancellation of at least P20 billion in development funding from the Philippines, to the severe detriment of many of this country’s public health, education, livelihood, and governance capacity-building goals; is accused of election interference on behalf of right-wing extremists in three different countries other than the US; and about whom a soon-to-be published biography says, “there is no evidence he has any intellectual achievements.” Associating with this kind of individual in any sense, let alone doing business with him, is mockery of Comelec’s mission to ensure free and fair democratic elections. Even if the Starlink product was the most fantastically capable and advanced internet service the world has ever seen – and it is quite far from being that – the moral hazard simply cannot be overlooked or justified.

      

Comelec’s internet provider enables enslavement of Filipinos (March 11, 2025)

THE decision by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to procure internet services from Elon Musk’s Starlink for the upcoming midterm elections at first seemed to be merely morally and practically questionable judgement, but recent news reveals that it is far worse than that. Signing a contract with Starlink was an utterly reprehensible decision and a gross dereliction of duty. Whether that action violated any laws, I am not qualified to say, but it is possible that it ran afoul of laws and rules on government procurement.

On February 27, which was coincidentally the same day my first column about Comelec and Starlink was published (“Comelec supports fascism with Starlink plan”), Wired published an in-depth report (https://www.wired.com/story/starlink-scam-compounds) on the use of Starlink by the “scam hubs” in Southeast Asia, mostly located in Myanmar and Cambodia. These are the very same compounds where tens of thousands of foreign workers – including Filipinos numbering in the hundreds, if not thousands – are enslaved, tricked by offers of legitimate work and then forced to work on various online scams.

The conditions in these compounds are appalling, as described by the people who are fortunate enough to escape from them. Workers are subject to torture if they try to escape or do not meet their quota for scams carried out successfully. Living conditions are miserable, and the workers are not paid – or if they are, their pay is withheld and applied to a massive fee ($15,000 is commonly mentioned) those who control these scam hubs demand to secure a worker’s release. In reality, because they are carrying out criminal activity on a massive scale, none of the enslaved workers are ever allowed to leave; in the unlikely event that a worker manages to pay off the fee, the amount demanded is simply increased.

SpaceX, the Elon Musk-led company responsible for Starlink, was formally notified as far back as July 2024 that its services were being used to carry out criminal activity, in a letter sent to SpaceX’s attorneys by the deputy district attorney of Santa Clara County in California. The deputy DA, whose concern was for victims of online scams in her area, “offered to share more information to help the company in ‘disrupting the work of bad actors’,” the Wired article said.

Neither SpaceX nor Starlink replied to the deputy DA’s letter, the article reported. Likewise, Wired reported that it had “sent SpaceX a list of questions about the alleged use of Starlink at scam compounds, including coordinates of suspected scam compounds where phones have connected to the Starlink network. SpaceX did not respond to the request for comment.” This, despite its terms of service clearly stating that “SpaceX may terminate services to users if they participate in ‘fraudulent’ activities or if a system is used in unauthorized locations. In addition, in a post on Twitter (X) addressing the use of Starlink in Russia and Dubai (it is neither officially available nor supposed to work at all in either of those countries) back in February 2024, Starlink said, “If SpaceX obtains knowledge that a Starlink terminal is being used by a sanctioned or unauthorized party, we investigate the claim and take actions to deactivate the terminal if confirmed.”

According to those conditions, none of the scam compounds in Myanmar – there are about 40 of them in the Myawaddy region – should be able to use Starlink, as the country’s military junta has banned it. However, enforcement is obviously non-existent due to the country’s ongoing civil war, and Starlink, despite having been informed of the situation, has turned a blind eye to it and not acted to cut off the service. In fact, according to local reports in Cambodia, Starlink has recently agreed to increase its service in that country, including in the rural areas where an estimated 100,000 people are held as slaves in scam compounds. The Wired article, citing UN data, said that there were another 120,000 in Myanmar.

How many of those are Filipinos is unknown, but the accounts of 12 Filipinos who were among 250 people who were rescued last month when the Myanmar military raided the compound where they were held suggested there are hundreds more.

The only way a government or anyone else on the ground can block a Starlink internet connection is by physically removing the receiver unit. Starlink, however, can easily block connection for any ground terminal, or even for entire geographical areas; for example, it blocked the service for all of Russia, in accordance with sanctions imposed by the US government when Russia invaded Ukraine. Yet the company’s response to its system being used by slave labor in Southeast Asia has been to ignore the notifications, and even expand its service in the areas where these scam hubs are mostly located.

This entire situation instantly renders Starlink ineligible to be a contractor for projects by any of the international ODA agencies, multilateral banks and funding organizations, and UN agencies, under the procurement rules each of them follow. Yet Comelec, either through sheer ignorance and failure to carry out proper due diligence, or through an intentional lack of concern that Starlink facilitates the enslavement in foreign countries of Filipino citizens, has gone ahead and signed a deal with Starlink to provide 7,000 ground stations for connectivity in remote and isolated areas of the country.

Doing business with Starlink makes Comelec complicit in the human trafficking of Filipinos, as well as thousands of other innocent victims from other countries, and Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia owes the country an immediate explanation for it. If Comelec was unaware of Starlink’s support for slavery and internet crime and is only learning about it now, that indicates a very sloppy job on Comelec’s part of vetting a potential service provider, but the proper authorities can address that. The correct thing for Comelec to do in this case is to immediately cancel the Starlink contract.

If, on the other hand, Comelec was aware of the manner in which Starlink facilitates criminal activity and has refused to take action despite being informed about it, and then went ahead and signed a contract with Starlink anyway, that is simply unacceptable. Severe consequences by the authorities with oversight of Comelec should follow.

(Image: Starlink satellite burning up over Switzerland last year; from a Twitter post)