Lutnick pushes weaker overseas chip controls amid family business overlap

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has advocated a less stringent version of proposed controls on advanced chip sales to overseas data centers, The New York Times reported. One operator affected by the debate is a client of Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm Lutnick formerly led and handed to his sons. The operator's A201 data center in Malaysia plans to open next year with hundreds of millions of dollars in advanced Nvidia AI servers and supply computing power to a Chinese technology company. That arrangement is legal under existing restrictions on direct chip sales to Chinese firms. The proposed controls would give Washington greater oversight of sales to international data centers.