Let’s unpack Tengku Zafrul hot take on data centre economic spillovers. A few questions for Gobind Singh Deo and Fadillah Yusof too.
1. Nuclear! Tengku Zafrul says Malaysia should consider nuclear because our neighbours are doing the same. Yet those same countries are also deploying rooftop solar, floating solar, battery storage and grid upgrades today. Nuclear may take 10-15 years to materialise. What’s Malaysia’s plan for now?
2. More importantly, data centres need power and water now, not 10-15 years from now. During El Niño and drought periods, some states already face water stress. How will Malaysia secure energy and water for households while supporting growing data centre demand?
3. We are told data centres create indirect employment through the ecosystems they support. Fair enough. But if we follow the money, land, consultants, contractors, construction, servers, cloud services and electricity, at which stage are large numbers of permanent Malaysian jobs actually created?
4. Data centres create economic activity, but not all value stays in Malaysia. Landowners, contractors and utilities benefit. The highest-value segments, cloud services, AI, software and intellectual property, remain concentrated in the hands of global technology firms. How much value is Malaysia actually capturing?
5. Then comes the AI argument. We are told data centres create spillovers because they enable AI ecosystems. But which Malaysian sectors today are constrained by a lack of AI computing capacity? Are we solving identified problems, or building solutions first?
6. Comparing data centres to manufacturing is problematic. Manufacturing expands supplier networks and workforce demand. Data centres are highly automated. Many indirect jobs come from existing contractors servicing an additional client, not from large-scale new hiring.
7. The strongest spillover may not be AI at all. It may be renewable energy. Data centres can create bankable demand for solar, storage and grid upgrades. This is also where meaningful job creation is most likely to occur. If Malaysia misses that opportunity, we may bear the costs while capturing only a fraction of the benefits.
8. The debate should move beyond investment figures and headline announcements. The real questions are simple: Who captures the value? How many long-term jobs are created? What problems are being solved? And how much of that value remains in Malaysia?