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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the US is in a position to simply have some police deliberately fall for these scams, then wire over the $25k as the scammer instructs, then trace that money as far as the indian border, then demand the indian government repay it.

The indian government can continue tracing and find the scammer to get their money back (hard), or just shut down the call centers (easier).

Yes, I know this isn't the way international disputes work right now. But I think the US is in a position to make demands like this, with the threat that US borders will be closed to indian nationals, goods and investment unless india pays up.

Repeat however many times are necessary to solve the problem.

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They could just sanction the banks that take the money by cutting them off from SWIFT if they can’t track down who’s benefiting from these scams. You don’t even have to involve the Indian government.

Hit them where it hurts: Ban all family members of anybody in Indian government from entering the US for any reason. Not for school, nor a job, nor even a short vacation to visit other family members. Limit this ban to Indian politicians and their family members; most Indians should be unaffected.

Step 1 on the (very short) path to making the US dollar permanently lose its influence. Unless India starts invading Pakistan for conquest or population destruction, sanctions even on Indian politicians and their families go way too far (not to mention some of those sanctioned people would likely be top business leaders as well). The US is already testing its limits trying to go against Russia and China simultaneously. Economic warfare (for that is what sanctions effectively are) against India as well would be catastrophic.

> Economic warfare (for that is what sanctions effectively are) against India as well would be catastrophic.

No it wouldn't. India is still tiny economically compared to the US and the global economy. They have a $3.x trillion economy; the US is seven to eight times larger. Maybe in another 25-30 years they'll get to a $10t economy (in today's USD).

> The US is already testing its limits trying to go against Russia and China simultaneously

The US isn't testing its limits at all re Russia. We're not even breaking a sweat yet (we're hardly making an effort at industrial scaling just for military purposes for example). We're using our vast logistic machine to ship Ukraine weapons to defend itself, and they're doing most of the hard work. The US is using a few single digit percent beyond its normal pace for the Russia vs Ukraine war. We're not mass producing war machines just for that purpose for example; so far it's largely logistics/shipping/intel and modestly boosting a few types of ammo that Ukraine particularly needs. The US also has plenty of help from its NATO (and other) allies on sanctions and weaponry, which makes it that much easier on the US (not having to go it alone).

Russia is just that mediocre.

> We're not even breaking a sweat yet

The Wall Street journal headline from yesterday "To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip Breakfast" https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/cpi-report-today-january-20...

The same mighty Russia whos economy is 60% the size of UK or France? Despite having a population more than both those countries combined?

Not a big fan of this slope you're sliding down.

It's one thing to ban a politician if you can show they're profiteering from a scam call center but it's another to ban them just because there are scam call centers. Literally all I think you should have to do is show they're supporting them before you can do some sort of adverse action. But you do need to have proof first ...

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