Huawei is banned from the US, at least that's what the public and what consumers think. The reason is that Huawei is not banned from donating to research according to US law.
There is a loophole
Because it is not allowed to buy Huawei products in the country, but now it turns out that the Chinese company, which is deeply connected to the authorities in Beijing, is secretly paying for what is referred to as ground-breaking research at American universities - this includes once prestigious Harvard. To keep the project secret, everything was routed through a private group in Washington DC.
"Huawei is the sole funder of a research competition that has awarded millions of dollars since its launch in 2022 and attracted hundreds of proposals from researchers around the world, including those at top US universities that have banned their researchers from working with the company, according to documents and people familiar with the matter," says Bloomberg.
"We didn't want it to appear as PR"
The newspaper has spoken to people at Harvard who supposedly were not aware that it was Huawei that was behind it all and believed that the money came from a domestic organization. Huawei defends itself by saying that it did not intend to cause problems, but that it hid the name so that it was not perceived as PR.
The organization that manages the distribution of the funds states that this is normal practice and that the donation was approved by external lawyers and approved by the board. “We are completely transparent with the funding and support of the Foundation programs with the Optica Foundation Board, Optica Board, and staff,” says Liz Rogan, Optica's CEO.
Huawei has provided much more than Google and Meta
The Optica Foundations annual report for 2023 reveals that Huawei was the largest donor. The company has donated more than $1 million to Optica over the past two decades. Far behind them are Google and Meta, who have given more than $200,000.
"It does not look good for a prestigious research foundation to anonymously accept money from a Chinese company. It will raise many questions in terms of national security issues for the US government," says James Mulvenon above Bloomberg.
Mulvenon knows the US military well and has worked on research security issues and industrial espionage. The problem is that Huawei, which has representatives of the communist government on the board as required by the authorities, can influence which research projects are invested in, and in that way steer the US in the desired direction within various fields.