The U.S. is asking Malaysia to more closely track shipments of advanced semiconductors, including chips made by U.S. firm Nvidia, to make sure they’re not transiting the country before ending up in China in violation of U.S. export controls, the Financial Times reported. Trade Minister Zafrul Aziz said the U.S. is “asking us to make sure that we monitor every shipment that comes to Malaysia when it involves Nvidia chips,” according to the report. “They want us to make sure that servers end up in the data centres that they're supposed to and not suddenly move to another ship." Aziz also said Malaysia recently formed a task force to tighten regulations around the country’s data center sector, which relies on Nvidia chips.
The Bureau of Industry and Security corrected a date error in the savings clause of a final rule this week that added 12 entities to its Entity List (see 2503250075). The savings clause says that all exports that now require a license as a result of the rule but were aboard a carrier to a port as of March 25 may proceed to their destinations under the previous eligibility as long as they are exported by April 24. Any items not exported before midnight April 24 will require a license.
The U.K. this year plans to update its export controls to align them with changes recently made by the multilateral Wassenaar Arrangement, Nuclear Suppliers Group and Australia Group. The updates include changes to the technical parameters for certain advanced artificial intelligence chip uses; revisions to the definitions for “spacecraft,” “satellite,” “space probe” and “space vehicle”; and more. The U.K. said it plans to make the changes this spring.
Senior Bureau of Industry and Security officials haven’t yet been given orders by the Trump administration on several key export control policy issues, including possible plans to soon relax export controls against Russia, multiple Commerce Department officials said last week.
It’s still unclear how the Trump administration will approach the Bureau of Industry and Security's artificial intelligence diffusion rule or any of the agency’s recently published proposed or interim final rules that haven’t yet taken effect, a Commerce Department official said.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is reviewing public comments on two rules it proposed last year to expand U.S. persons controls, a Commerce Department official said March 18.
The congressionally mandated National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology is expected to include recommendations on export control policy in its upcoming report to Congress, a Commerce Department official said March 18.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies this month published English translations of recently updated or proposed semiconductor-related export controls issued by the Netherlands and Japan. The new Dutch regulations (see 2501150057) “specify which types of equipment now require a license to be legally exported from the Netherlands, based on specific technology usage or performance thresholds,” CSIS said, while the Japanese document includes proposed rules for “tighter restrictions on chip testing and measurement equipment, computer-aided design software, materials, and semiconductors.”
The Bureau of Industry and Security released a "preliminary" agenda for its update conference scheduled for next week. The agenda includes two plenary sessions, a panel on export enforcement, and breakout sessions covering various topics, including semiconductor export controls, "emerging technology and foreign technology analysis," end-use/end-user controls, AUKUS, export enforcement best practices, the Office of Information and Communications Technology and Services, a regulatory review, space controls, and the Defense Production Act. The agenda also includes a list of speakers, which includes senior officials from BIS, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the State Department and the Pentagon as well as government officials from Japan, South Korea and the EU. BIS said the agenda is subject to change.
British and Japanese ministers last week discussed export controls on critical technologies, supply chain issues, the World Trade Organization and other trade topics during the second U.K.-Japan Strategic Economic Policy and Trade Dialogue.