Malaysia proposes new legislation to crack down on AI graphics card smuggling

Malaysia is planning to introduce a new law requiring data center operators to disclose their AI accelerator imports and power consumption. The measure aims to prevent companies from legally importing restricted hardware into Malaysian data centers only to smuggle or re-export it to countries like China. Under the proposed rules, operators will also be required to pay for all the electricity capacity they reserve, regardless of their actual usage. While the government hopes these tracking measures will curb unauthorized re-exports and optimize infrastructure, industry experts note that estimating exact GPU counts based purely on power consumption remains technically challenging.