Litigation Member Timothy O'Toole and International Counsel Collmann Griffin, a former Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) senior adviser, were quoted on Malaysia's July export license mandate for shipments of U.S.-origin advanced artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors, which could be a precursor to the U.S. carving out Malaysia from upcoming rules on advanced chip exports. Griffin, speaking on Miller & Chevalier's EMBARGOED! podcast, said Malaysia's export control announcement could be "part of a deal that we'll see in the replacement to the AI diffusion rule," in which the U.S. removes certain restrictions on Malaysia "in exchange for Malaysia implementing their own controls."

Along with new chip controls, the Trump administration has also been working on regulations that could create a 50 percent ownership threshold rule for parties on the Entity List. Griffin said it's clear why, "from the U.S. government perspective," a 50 percent Entity List rule would be appealing, especially if it helps with "cutting down diversion, cutting down loopholes." O'Toole, also speaking on the podcast, noted that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) ran into an issue in 2018 when it sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, founder of major aluminum producer Rusal. "All of a sudden, the aluminum market started to crash," O'Toole said, adding that OFAC eventually issued general licenses to suspend the application of the agency's 50 percent rule against Rusal.