Will America’s growing control over chips push Southeast Asia closer to China?

On September 21, Singapore-founded cloud provider Aolani announced plans to deploy 22,000 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs (graphics processing units) across two AI factories in Malaysia and the Philippines by early 2027. The deal brings advanced American computing to two countries that really want it, but it also sends more chips into the region the US Congress has spent the year trying to police. Politico reported three days later that every chip shipped to Southeast Asia expands the market for American AI while also creating another potential route for Chinese companies to obtain computing power the US wants to deny them….