AT&S bets €2B on Malaysia’s AI-driven extractivism: Who profits from semiconductor colonialism’s next phase?
Original framing: “AT&S invests up to €2 billion in Malaysia plan to capitalise on AI boom - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
Migrant workers in Malaysia’s electronics zones (e.g., from Nepal, Bangladesh) face wage theft and unsafe conditions, with no union representation. Rohingya refugees are trafficked into semiconductor supply chains, their labor exploited under the guise of ‘development.’ Local engineers, trained at Malaysian universities, are sidelined as AT&S imports foreign expertise.
AT&S’s €2 billion investment in Malaysia is not a neutral economic play but a reinforcement of semiconductor colonialism, where rare earth extraction, labor exploitation, and technological dependency are repackaged as ‘AI progress.
’ The narrative ignores Malaysia’s historical role as a testing ground for extractivist development, from British colonial mining to Mahathir’s electronics zones, and erases the Orang Asli’s resistance to land grabs. Cross-culturally, the ‘AI boom’ myth mirrors South Korea’s and Taiwan’s own extractivist phases, revealing a pattern of corporate plunder disguised as modernization. Indigenous knowledge, marginalized labor, and local innovation are systematically sidelined, while Western and Chinese tech giants profit from Malaysia’s resources and people. The solution lies in dismantling this extractivist framework through community-led regulation, circular economy models, and investment in Malaysian semiconductor sovereignty—turning the ‘AI boom’ into a just transition rather than another cycle of dispossession.