KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia should not be too quick to celebrate large-scale data-centre investments without examining how much economic value actually remains in the country, says Khairy Jamaluddin.
The former Umno youth chief warned that the sector could repeat the experience of multinational manufacturing investments, where intellectual property, senior management and profits largely remained in foreign hands.
He said Malaysia should look beyond headline foreign direct investment figures and ask whether local companies, workers and industries were capturing enough of the value created.
“I am worried. I see data centres in the same way as the multinational factories that came to Malaysia in the early 1980s,” he said at the 12th Barisan Nasional Forum, themed “Agenda Malaysia Biru”, at Menara Dato’ Onn here on Wednesday (Oct 7).
Also present was Barisan chairman Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.
The forum was moderated by Barisan secretary-general Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abd Kadir, with panellists MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong, former Umno youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin, Tan Sri Nordin Kardi of Jakarta Business School and political analyst Prof Datuk Dr Sivamurugan Pandian.
Khairy said data centres also consume large amounts of electricity and water while requiring relatively few workers once construction is completed.
More importantly, he said Malaysia must ensure that the computing capacity generated by facilities operated by companies such as Meta, ByteDance and Google was used to support Malaysian-developed artificial intelligence applications.
“If we are not prepared to use the AI computing power coming out of these data centres, it will ultimately provide services to applications in Singapore or other countries,” he said.
Malaysia, he said, should therefore move beyond merely hosting data centres and focus on creating technology and applications of its own.
“It should not just be ‘Made in Malaysia’ or data centres in Malaysia, but AI applications that are made by Malaysia,” he added.
