TL;DR

This is a follow-on post to an original piece we published Kill the Lights, Fire Up Starlink: Scam Compounds Slide South

H/T to those of you working this ongoing mess- these numbers aren't to dissuade you, but provide more context to the decision makers- maybe we can make the world a little safer.

We apprecate you!

Question

Will Cambodia achieve a complete, durable crackdown on scam organizations operating within its borders (border zones + urban centers), meaning the ecosystem is dismantled rather than displaced, by 2030-12-31?

Executive Forecast

10% reflects a high bar: “complete crackdown” requires durable nationwide suppression plus organizer-level prosecutions and asset denial, not periodic raids and displacement. The biggest hinge is whether Cambodia’s enforcement turns structurally toward dismantling protection and money-laundering enablers (payments/casinos/real estate) under sustained international pressure. The cleanest leading indicator is independent mapping showing a year-long collapse in major-compound prevalence across all major hotspots.

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Forecast Card

• Question: Will Cambodia achieve a complete, durable crackdown on scam organizations operating within its borders (border zones + urban centers), meaning the ecosystem is dismantled rather than displaced, by 2030-12-31?

• Resolution Criteria (Quantified, auditable): YES if all conditions below are met by 2030-12-31, using the scoring rubric and data sources listed here.

  1. Hub-status downgrade: At least two independent authoritative assessments (e.g., UN/IGO + major investigative/monitoring org) state Cambodia is no longer a major regional hub for scam-compound operations and do not identify any Cambodian hotspot as among the region’s primary concentration areas.
  2. Major-compound prevalence threshold: For 12 consecutive months ending on or before 2030-12-31, open-source mapping/monitoring indicates Cambodia has ≤10 “major scam compounds” nationwide and ≤2 per hotspot province.
     • Major scam compound (operational definition): a site credibly assessed to host ≥50 scam workers or to have industrial-scale infrastructure (guards, controlled dorms, rows of devices) or repeated victim-escape / raid documentation consistent with forced scamming.
     • Hotspot provinces/cities (tracking set): Preah Sihanouk (Sihanoukville), Banteay Meanchey (Poipet/OSmach), Svay Rieng (Bavet), Phnom Penh, Koh Kong, Pursat. (Adjustable if new hotspots emerge.)
  3. Disruption of enabling ecosystem (not just raids): Cambodia shows sustained action against upper-tier facilitators, meeting both:
     • Prosecutions: ≥20 organizer/facilitator convictions (owners, financiers, senior managers, corrupt protectors, trafficking organizers) with custodial sentences ≥5 years (or equivalent under Cambodian law) and at least 5 convictions involving public officials for protection/collusion-related offenses; and
     • Asset denial: ≥USD 100M equivalent in cumulative, publicly reported asset freezes/seizures/forfeitures linked to scam-compound or scam-laundering cases between 2027–2030 (sum across years), evidenced in official reporting or court orders.
  4. Trafficking/forced-scamming pressure reduction (proxy metric): For calendar years 2029 and 2030, credible reporting shows <500 identified victims/year rescued/escaped from scam-compound forced scamming in Cambodia (recognizing undercount risk; this is a directional, not absolute, proxy).

• Horizon: 2030-12-31 (America/New_York)

• Probability (Now): 10% | Log-odds: -2.20

• Confidence in Inputs: Medium (criteria are now more measurable; primary Cambodian judicial/AML data availability remains a constraint)

• Base Rate (Tightened): 8% from a similarity-weighted reference class of jurisdictions facing industrial-scale scam-compound ecosystems where enforcement pressure often yields relocation/fragmentation rather than elimination (table below; anchored to GI-TOC and INTERPOL reporting on persistence and mobility).

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Reference Class Table (Auditable, short)

Outcome being scored: “Durable domestic suppression of industrial-scale scam compounds (not merely displacement) within ~5–8 years of becoming a prominent hub / receiving major crackdown attention.”

How this maps to an 8% base rate (explicit):

• Empirical score: 0.5 “success-equivalent” / 5 cases ≈ 10%.
• Similarity downweight for Cambodia: China is materially less comparable (state capacity/rule-of-law enforcement intensity). Applying a conservative ~0.7 weight to the 4 “Cambodia-like” cases (all failures) and ~0.3 weight to China’s partial success yields an effective base rate pulled down to ~8%.
• This is intentionally conservative: it avoids “0%” while reflecting that Cambodia’s closest analogs in the Mekong scam-compound pattern have not shown full elimination in the available reporting period.

Bayesian Update (Base → Now, auditably)

• Start: Base rate 8% (log-odds -2.44).
• + intl financial pressure & targeting of enabling nodes (OFAC + FinCEN actions; NBC license revocation referenced): +0.25 log-odds.
• - entrenched protection + adaptation/relocation dynamics (GI-TOC/INTERPOL): -0.05 log-odds (small here because this is partly “in” the base rate already).
• Posterior: log-odds ≈ -2.24 → ~9.6%, rounded to 10%.

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