Companies blocked from acquiring advanced AI chips and servers through third-country routing may increasingly turn to overseas data centers and cloud computing capacity as an alternative path to the technology, according to a Taiwan-based economist who studies cross-border supply chains and technology trade.
Chang Chien-yi, president of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research and executive director of the Chinese Taipei APEC Study, told The Epoch Times that the cross-border rental of computing power could become the next battlefield for U.S. export controls. He said the shift could mark the next phase in the bilateral technology competition as Washington’s effort to block the physical transfer of advanced AI hardware exposes gray areas in cross-border supply chains.
The cloud computing loophole
The logic of the concern is straightforward. If a company cannot import an advanced processor, it might instead rent access to a data center outside China that operates the chips and provide computational results back to users in China. The data, rather than the hardware, crosses the border. Whether existing frameworks adequately address this kind of remote access to restricted computing resources has become an active question among trade lawyers and policy analysts.
The Straits Times reported on Aug. 27 that the U.S. government is investigating whether a Singapore-based logistics company helped move systems equipped with Nvidia chips from Taiwan through the United States and Southeast Asia and ultimately into China, citing anonymous sources. That investigation illustrates the physical hardware problem. The cloud computing concern is a separate and potentially more difficult enforcement challenge.
The Taiwan angle
Chang’s comments came as Taiwan investigations into suspected origin-labeling violations have raised concerns that companies could face greater scrutiny in the United States for Chinese-made products and components routed through Taiwan. The labeling concern is separate from the smuggling issue but reflects the same underlying tension about how the geographic distance between manufacture and final destination has become a significant variable in how controls are applied and circumvented.
Taiwan sits at the center of the global semiconductor supply chain, both as a manufacturer of the most advanced chips and as a transit point for technology flowing in both directions. The island’s exposure to U.S. export control enforcement increases as Washington tightens restrictions.
The broader U.S.-China technology competition
The export control framework the United States has built, including restrictions on Nvidia’s most capable processors, has produced a sustained effort by companies and intermediaries to find paths around them. Each iteration involves new methods on one side and new enforcement tools on the other.
Cloud computing access as a circumvention vector would require a different regulatory response than physical shipment restrictions, since it involves data flows and service agreements rather than physical goods.
Whether existing export frameworks can be adapted to address cloud-based access to restricted computing is one of the central unresolved questions in U.S. technology policy.
