Why the Jensen Huang affair spells trouble for South-east Asia

• Trump backs Jensen Huang, but the affair with a suspected Chinese spy raises security fears and could lead to tighter US chip export controls.
• South-east Asian data centres in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand may face stricter controls on advanced Nvidia chips and cloud access for Chinese firms.
• Congress is pressing for action, while Nvidia is tightening its own rules, but lawmakers may avoid steps that damage a key US AI company.

PHILADELPHIA – US President Donald Trump has stood by Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang over his affair with a suspected Chinese spy, but the odds are escalating for a clampdown on the export of cutting-edge American chips, complicating South-east Asia’s AI infrastructure build-out and creating a choke point for Chinese AI start-ups.

Data centre operators in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand are in for stricter checks on purchases of advanced American chips and tighter restrictions on renting cloud computing capacity to companies in China, say US tech analysts.