KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is considering a law that will allow the government to monitor data centre operations, including their use of high-performance chips, the trade minister said on Thursday.
- The Southeast Asian country is facing renewed scrutiny into whether it is being used by companies to circumvent US restrictions on the use of advanced artificial intelligence chips, following a scandal involving Nvidia Corp chief executive Jensen Huang and his alleged ties to a suspected Chinese spy.
- Malaysia imposed export controls last year on the movement of high-performance AI chips of US origin, following pressure from Washington to stem the flow of such chips to China.
- Malaysia is seeking to capture data on those planning to build data centres in the country, with applicants expected to disclose the facilities' operators and locations, as well as the amount of graphics processing units (GPUs) being brought in, Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani said in a speech during a ministry event on Thursday.
- At a later press conference, Johari said Malaysia needed to ensure that any chips subject to US restrictions were imported into the country for domestic use, rather than for re-export.
- "If they want to use this country to trade something that is defined as an illegal transaction, we need to make sure that it will not happen in this country," he said.
- Johari said the government had no plans to open investigations into Speedmatrix, a Malaysian unit of Singapore-based cloud computing firm Megaspeed, following allegations that it may have been used to channel Nvidia chips to Chinese users.
- "If... they buy the GPUs for their own use in the data centres, then I cannot see what law that we need to use (to investigate them)," he said.
- Megaspeed said in a statement on its website dated Thursday that it took its compliance obligations under US export control laws extremely seriously and was committed to working constructively with the US government.
- "Megaspeed welcomes appropriate government scrutiny and is committed to demonstrating through concrete actions that it operates responsibly, transparently, and in accordance with applicable US laws," its chairman and chief executive James Tan Yong Pong said.
