US pushes Remote Access Security Act to close NVIDIA chip export remote access loophole
On August 19 multiple Chinese firms were found using Southeast Asian data centers to remotely access NVIDIA chips for training Kimi K3, DeepSeek, Alibaba models. US moves to legislate.
On August 19, CNBC and others reported multiple Chinese tech firms using data centers in Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan equipped with NVIDIA high-end AI chips to remotely access compute for training models including Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, DeepSeek, and Alibaba models. The practice is viewed as a regulatory loophole because current US rules govern physical chip exports but do not restrict remote access to chip compute.
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios publicly accused Moonshot AI of using NVIDIA GB300 chips via a Thai facility less than a week after Kimi K3's launch. He also accused Moonshot AI of using Anthropic Fable capabilities in training Kimi K3; the Chinese side called these claims defamatory. ByteDance has worked with Singapore-headquartered Aolani to access NVIDIA chip compute in Malaysia. Alibaba and Tencent have also reportedly obtained NVIDIA chip compute via other Asian nations.
On the legislative front, the US House passed the Remote Access Security Act (RASA) in January, aiming to extend export controls to remote cloud access of critical hardware and software. The bill awaits Senate approval. If enacted, it would impose KYC and customer identity verification compliance burdens on cloud providers, potentially causing significant industry disruption.
DC Byte data shows 31 planned 100MW+ data centers across Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand versus only two currently built. JLL estimates global data center capacity will roughly double to about 200GW by 2030, reflecting massive Southeast Asian compute infrastructure expansion.