On Oct. 17, Tom’s Hardware reported, citing Bloomberg, that Taiwan planned to expand export controls to cover AI servers and its latest chips shipped to China.
What Taiwan had considered earlier
On June 10, the Taipei Times republished a Bloomberg report describing an earlier discussion in which officials considered controls covering all customers in China, not just blacklisted entities, and a possible threshold based on processing power. The report said details were still under discussion. These were options from that earlier phase; the October report described plans to cover AI servers and the latest chips.
Trade commitments and reported penalties
Kung Ming-hsin, Taiwan’s minister of economic affairs, said some controlled-item measures would correspond to U.S. measures because of commitments under the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade.
Tom’s Hardware also reported that smuggling controlled items after the controls take effect could be prosecuted under Taiwan’s Foreign Trade Act, with penalties of up to five years in prison and/or a fine of about US$92,500.
NeoTeo previously covered Willy Sun’s reported guilty plea to four counts in a separate U.S. AI-server case.
