“The administration bans chip sales directly to China, but it hasn't banned Chinese companies from using data centers just right outside that fence in Southeast Asia. So there's just a booming industry there. And officials right now are discussing how much to regulate that. They've struggled with that question for over a year now.”

Hard Fork (NYT) · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026

Context

Asked what to watch in Washington after Huang's exit, Swanson, who covers trade, points to Chinese companies renting compute in Southeast Asian data centers as the big open loophole in US export controls.

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Transcript

Hard Fork (NYT) Around 31:53 into the episode

Stephen Witt

…have to use to stay productive or don't, the chips will be there to supply them one way or another is my feeling, I think. However, if AI disappoints, you know, as a product, if AI ends up being kind of an expensive and broken toy, which it can sometimes seem like, then that, then it won't work.

Max Read

…reaction in Washington has been to the resignation and what you see the sort of the next steps on the political side of this. I mean, we talked about hearings. Clearly, there's still a sort of battle being played out inside the administration. So what should we be looking at for the next few weeks?

Ana Swanson

…You know, we're definitely looking at the possibility of more regulation from Congress, chips bills that could impact their sales somewhat. And then also looking to see if the Trump administration has more motivation to issue these kind of global rules, particularly ones that clamp down on data centers in Southeast Asia, which is kind of this, you know, this massive loophole that's been created. The administration bans chip sales directly to China, but it hasn't banned Chinese companies from using data centers just right outside that fence in Southeast Asia. So there's just a booming industry there. And officials right now are discussing how much to regulate that. They've struggled with that question for over a year now. So I'm not sure how quickly that regulation would come out, if at all, but certainly it is top of everyone's mind at this moment.

Max Read

Stephen, you've covered Jensen Wong more closely than just about anyone. Would you have ever foreseen this outcome?

Stephen Witt

No. You know, I thought he would survive the initial scandal, actually. It was only when I started to hear about more women that I was like, oh, maybe not. You know, there was just such a strong incentive for the company to keep him, more so than almost any other company. It's extraordinary to…

Max Read

Yeah. I mean, this is, it's the biggest story in tech this year. It feels like an espionage novel and a family tragedy all sort of rolled into one. But, you know, as Stephen is saying, it has this kind of recognizable human nature element to it. It's a classic story of Hubris. Some guy got insanely…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from Hard Fork (NYT)

“If you are not a world-class computer scientist, over the long term, you cannot be the CEO of NVIDIA or really any microchip company. The CEO of the company has to be an electrical engineer. They have to understand computing from the level of the transistor, scaling all the way up to the level of the data center.” — Stephen Witt, Hard Fork (NYT)

“I think also Jensen created a reality bubble around himself. Inside the company, it was almost like a cult leader when he got up and talked. He was like a prophet. But the thing was, everything he said actually came true. And then when something he said came true, everybody in the room made a billion dollars. So you couldn't even disagree with Jensen inside the company, and he wouldn't let you anyway.” — Stephen Witt, Hard Fork (NYT)