Our cover this week tells the story of online scams. The Economist’s South-East Asia correspondent, Sue-Lin Wong, spent more than a year investigating how transnational organised crime works. The result is Scam Inc, which you can listen to as an eight-part podcast series. (It is also the subject of this week’s briefing.) The series explains how the familiar hierarchical structures of organised crime—think mob bosses calling the shots—have been replaced by a service industry specialising in different parts of a criminal supply chain. 

The days of obviously fake emails from hard-up Nigerian princes are gone. In their place is a predatory, sophisticated industry worth more than $500bn a year, which rivals the size of the illicit drug trade. Sue-Lin’s investigation starts with the collapse of a bank in rural Kansas. Her reporting took her from America to Europe and through Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore. I hope you find it as illuminating as I did.

Last week I travelled to Syria to meet the country’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa. As my colleagues and I drove from downtown Damascus towards the presidential palace for Mr Sharaa’s first interview in his new role, we were all full of curious anticipation. He answered my questions at length and without hesitation, laying out a vision that, in general terms, sounded promising to a Western ear. With the right leadership Syria’s potential is obvious. The question is whether Mr Sharaa is the man to fulfil it.