The Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI) today issued an order that the export, transfer and transit of high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) chips originating from the United States will be subject to a trade permit with immediate effect.
Companies or individuals wishing to trade US AI chips must give the authorities 30 days' notice in advance. This is in line with Section 12 of the Strategic Trade Act 2010 (STA 2010). The order was given after an incident occurred where browsers with NVIDIA GPUs were smuggled to China from Singapore via Malaysia with a value of up to $390 million (~RM 1.7 billion) last January.
With this, Malaysia will no longer allow it to be a location where export restrictions are circumvented by certain entities for purposes that violate international law. Last week, reports emerged that Malaysia and Thailand may be subject to export restrictions on AI chips by the United States following an incident where chips were successfully smuggled into a country subject to export restrictions.