Myanmar’s Military Struggles to Control the Virtual Battlefield Crisis Group Asia Report N°314, 18 May 2021 Page 24 for control of the online space, given that it faces overwhelming domestic and international opposition and has essentially been banned from the most influential social media platforms. It has neither the financial nor the human resources to replicate the model of China’s “great firewall”, which requires not only restricting access to the global internet but also developing an ecosystem of local applications and actively censoring local content.114 Although on paper the military has many officers with degrees or other training in information technology, few have much proficiency. “In terms of technical skill, the military is behind the protesters and general public. Civilians have more technical know-how. … As a result, the military’s response has been reactive rather than proactive”, commented a social media researcher.115 There are few avenues to rectify this capacity shortfall in the short to medium term. Even if the military could get foreign assistance to pursue a more sophisticated approach, finding the staff to make it work would be a major challenge. Given the widespread anger at the military and the social pressure not to collaborate with the regime, recruiting from the private sector would be extremely difficult. A lack of centralised databases for even basic information, such as identity card details, mean possibilities for applying artificial intelligence will also be limited.116 Instead, the regime appears to have settled on an old solution: an intranet.117 From mid-April, at the military’s direction, mobile operators began “whitelisting” certain applications so they could be opened using mobile data despite the shutdown. This practice started with account services for mobile users and mobile banking applications, but it went on to include productivity services such as Microsoft’s Office 365. Big businesses are expecting that they will soon be able to secure dedicated internet connections, known as dedicated internet access (DIA), on the condition that these connections are not used for political activities that undermine the regime.118 Multiple sources said whitelisting was not likely to be a short-term measure, after which regular mobile internet would be switched back on; instead, the regime considers it a potential long-term solution. Some sources anticipate that, once it has completed its plan, the military may even limit fibre-based connections to whitelisted applications only.119 This whitelisting approach might seem to offer control over the internet without disrupting (at least entirely) essential business services, but it is unlikely to be the panacea the Tatmadaw is hoping for. Technically it will present challenges, particularly as many applications use dynamic IP addresses that by nature change frequently.120 Myanmar’s tech-savvy youth are also likely to find loopholes through whitelist114 One source has estimated that the Chinese government spends at least $6.6 billion per year on internet censorship, employing huge numbers of human moderators. “Buying Silence: The Price of Internet Censorship in China”, The Jamestown Foundation, 12 January 2021. 115 Crisis Group interview, social media researcher, March 2021. 116 Crisis Group interviews, industry sources and social media researchers, March 2021. 117 Shortly after the former military regime permitted the country’s first internet connections in the late 1990s, it began work on an intranet that was pejoratively called the “Myanmar Wide Web”. The initiative was relatively unsuccessful, hosting just a small number of sites mainly for administrative purposes. 118 Crisis Group interviews, businesspeople from the banking and technology sectors, April 2021. 119 Ibid. 120 Telenor has already pointed to some of the technical challenges to whitelisting, including that to function properly, a whitelisted service will often require multiple other services that will need to be