Myanmar’s Military Struggles to Control the Virtual Battlefield Crisis Group Asia Report N°314, 18 May 2021 Page ii internet filtering. These responses reflect the military’s keen awareness of the important role social media plays in spreading information and shaping public opinion; it has grappled with how best to manage the online sphere to support its strategic objectives since the very first hours of the coup. In spite of the regime’s censorship efforts, opposition forces have so far successfully used the internet to promote their political agenda, organise protests and share information about events inside the country with each other and the world. They have primarily relied on free tools that require little skill or knowledge, such as encrypted messaging services, free VPNs and censorship circumvention applications. The military has responded by almost entirely shutting down internet access. Although the junta has not been technologically sophisticated in its actions, it has approached the challenge methodically, gradually ramping up internet shutdowns as it deemed necessary to achieve the desired effect. The mass outage it eventually opted for has already hurt the opposition movement, making it harder to organise protests and coordinate other activities. But the junta has also come head to head with forces beyond its direct control, particularly the policies of major social media platforms. Having heeded lessons from the way its platform was used during the authorities’ anti-Rohingya campaign of 2017, Facebook removed all military and some Myanmar government pages following the coup, dealing a major blow to the Tatmadaw’s ability to spread pro-regime messaging and leaving it reliant on less widely used websites and platforms. Tatmadaw personnel, however, appear to have found an outlet in TikTok, which was initially slow to respond to content that violates its guidelines, such as videos of Myanmar soldiers wielding weapons and making threats against protesters. TikTok has since made efforts to clean up its platform but has stopped short of banning the Tatmadaw. The Tatmadaw has faced significant online opposition before. In Rakhine State, the Arakan Army has harnessed the power of social media and other communications technologies with great effectiveness over the last few years, which partly explains its success in inflicting heavy losses on the Tatmadaw. There, the military eventually responded by pushing the civilian government to filter websites and shut down the internet on security grounds. The measures were somewhat effective in hindering Arakan Army operations, but also substantially hampered commerce and humanitarian efforts, turning the local population even more solidly against the Tatmadaw. The fact that the military is largely falling back on these same blunt methods of control following the February coup suggests it has not yet developed alternative strategies that could limit disruption and exact a lesser socio-economic toll. Myanmar’s military will face significant challenges shifting to a more sophisticated response to online dissent than wide-scale internet shutdowns. As it lacks the financial and human resources to develop a local version of China’s “great firewall”, in which access to the global internet is heavily restricted and local content actively censored, it has started developing what appears to be the first stage of an “intranet”, where mobile users have access only to whitelisted applications. But this course will inevitably limit its ability to offer anything more than the most basic services, with a major impact on the economy. Even if the regime were to receive assistance from sympathetic outside actors to expand its capacities, domestic opposition would make it difficult to recruit the local expertise needed to maintain a more repressive system,