Detail

Journalists learned that Huawei is the only sponsor of the research competition, which has received millions of dollars in prizes and hundreds of offers from scientists since 2022. Some of these scientists work at leading US universities that ban their employees from working with Huawei.

The research could lead to innovations that would give China an advantage in both defense contracts and commercial interests, according to Kevin Wolff, a partner at export control law firm Akin. Optica Foundation, which is behind all of this, published information about this issue on the internet. Deals with “highly sensitive optical sensors and detectors”among other research categories.

It’s a bad sign for a prestigious research foundation to anonymously accept money from a Chinese company that causes such national security concerns for the U.S. government.
says James Mulvenon, a defense contractor who works on research security issues and has co-authored several books on industrial espionage.

Even those who participated in a research competition in the USA They were unaware of Huawei’s involvement, believing the money would come from Optica, an independent company. The competition’s prize pool is $1 million a year, and Optica has given no indication that Huawei was the source of the money.

It is worth noting that this entire operation does not appear to be illegal, since research intended for publication is not subject to the ban. Huawei holds similar competitions in other parts of the world, but there it does so openly without the protection of third-party companies.

Comments

A Huawei representative told Bloomberg that the company and the Optica Foundation created the competition to support global research and encourage academic communication. His name has been kept confidential to avoid being perceived as promotional..

Optica CEO Liz Rogan said in a statement that most of the foundation’s donors “prefer to remain anonymous” and that “there is nothing unusual about this practice.” She also said that the entire board was aware of Huawei’s involvement and everyone signed up for it.

At the same time, Bloomberg agency noted that the competition supported by Huawei is the only competition that does not have a list of individual and corporate financial sponsors on the Optica website. Others freely recorded this information.

Sanctions

Over the last few years, Huawei has been restricted by a series of US sanctions. It is impossible to buy the vast majority of Huawei products from the USA.

It all started in 2019, when President Trump signed an executive order banning the sale and use of telecommunications equipment that posed “unacceptable” risks to national security. At the time, Trump said “foreign adversaries” would exploit gaps in the security system, leading to “potentially disastrous consequences.”

In this context, the company faced numerous accusations. Installs backdoors into its equipment’s networks to steal data, the company itself denies these allegations, although there is no evidence of actual theft. Huawei is also accused of using Chinese spies to influence the investigation, and the documents appear to indicate Huawei’s involvement in China’s efforts to spy not just on its own citizens but on the entire world.

Some expected President Biden to rescind Trump’s executive order when it expired in 2021, but he did the exact opposite. Not only did the executive order remain in effect, but Biden also signed legislation blocking Huawei’s FCC license and banning American investment in China’s high-tech industries.