Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant on the US blacklist, secretly funds cutting-edge research at US universities, including Harvard University, through an independent foundation based in Washington. There is.
Huawei is the sole funder of the research competition, which has raised millions of dollars since its inception in 2022 and has attracted hundreds of proposals from scientists around the world, including The list includes top US universities that have banned joint research with the company. Documents and people familiar with this issue.
The competition is run by the Optica Foundation, a division of the non-profit professional organization Optica, whose members’ research in light supports technologies such as communications, biomedical diagnostics and lasers.
The Foundation said it was “not required to designate Huawei as a funding source or program sponsor” for the contest, and that “the existence and content of this Agreement and the relationship between the parties are also considered confidential information.” It is stated in a private document. Bloomberg.
The findings come after Huawei, based in Shenzhen, China, has been subject to U.S. restrictions over the past few years in response to concerns that its technology could be used as a spying tool by the Chinese government. Nevertheless, it has revealed one of the strategies it is using to remain at the forefront of international research funding. .
Applicants and university officials contacted by Bloomberg, as well as one of the contest’s judges, said they did not know about Huawei’s role in funding the program until asked by a reporter. Some applicants interviewed by Bloomberg said they believed the money came from a foundation rather than a foreign corporation.
The Optica Foundation website lists 11 “Early Career Awards and Fellowships.” All contests, except for the Huawei-funded contest (which awards $1 million annually, 20 times the next highest annual prize on the site), include a list of individual and corporate funders. There is.
A Huawei spokesperson said the company and the Optica Foundation created the contest to support global research and promote scholarly communication. A spokesperson said Huawei’s name was withheld to avoid the contest being seen as promotional, and there was no malicious intent.
Optica CEO Liz Logan said in a statement that some foundation donors “have requested to remain anonymous, including donors in the United States,” and that “there is nothing unusual about this practice.” Stated.
Logan said the donation to Huawei was reviewed by outside lawyers and approved by the foundation’s board of directors. “We are fully transparent with the Optica Foundation Board of Directors, Optica Board of Directors, and staff about our funding and support of Foundation programs,” she said.
The covert efforts in Washington contrast with Huawei’s public efforts in several European countries. France and Germany, for example, have company-branded science hubs despite the European Commission recommending that the company’s equipment be banned from member states’ networks due to security risks.
The Optica Foundation’s 2023 annual report recognizes Huawei in a section listing “highest-level donors” who have donated more than $1 million since the organization’s founding more than 20 years ago. US tech giants Google and Metaplatforms are in the second-highest group of donors who gave more than $200,000.
The report does not say when donors donated, what it was used for, or how much they donated.
Security concerns have led many U.S. universities to instruct their researchers to cut ties with Huawei in recent years, fearing losing funding from federal agencies such as the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation. There is. Schools have also strengthened policies requiring academics to disclose overseas funding.
within US regulations
Kevin Wolf, a partner at Aiken who specializes in export control, said the foundation’s secret funding arrangement could violate U.S. Department of Commerce regulations that prevent individuals and organizations from sharing technology with Huawei. He said that the gender is low.
That’s because such rules don’t apply to the kind of research the contest is soliciting, which is science aimed at publication, Wolf said. However, if Huawei is subject to Treasury sanctions, its activities are likely not illegal, he said.
Research security experts still say the lack of transparency underlying this arrangement violates the spirit of university and U.S. funding agency policies that require researchers to disclose whether they receive foreign funding. He said there was.
They also said that some of the resulting research could be relevant to both defense and commerce. In an online post, the Optica Foundation lists “subsea and space-based solutions for global communication networks” and “highly sensitive optical sensors and detectors” as “interesting” topics.
“It’s unseemly that a prestigious research foundation is anonymously accepting funding from a Chinese company that raises a number of national security concerns for the U.S. government,” said the author, who works on research security issues at a defense contractor and co-author. said James Mulvenon, author of A seminal book on Chinese industrial espionage.
Jeff Stoff, founder of the non-profit Center for Research Security & Integrity, said that by funding the competition, Huawei will be able to “innovate any research project without directly contracting with an academic institution.” He said he could virtually influence “what people want to do.” He said the company may use the arrangement to recruit talent in the future by sponsoring interested applicants and acquiring intellectual property from research.
Kevin Gamache, chief research security officer at Texas A&M University, said the university was unaware of Huawei’s involvement in the competition until contacted by Bloomberg. The university subsequently investigated the matter and found that two of the researchers had applied for the award without knowing the source of the contest’s funding.
“We have processes in place to identify and block connections with Huawei unless they are significantly obfuscated in this way,” Gamache said.
At least one applicant for the contest comes from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which announced in 2019 that it would no longer accept new partnerships with Huawei. An MIT spokesperson declined to comment beyond pointing out the university’s policy.
university award winners
The Optica Foundation called on the universities whose researchers won funding to accept the funds on their behalf. Universities including Harvard University, the University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University, the University of British Columbia and Canada’s Wilfrid Laurier University declined to comment on whether they would take action in response to the Bloomberg findings.
A Harvard University spokesperson said the university has a policy against collaborating with Huawei.
Optica’s CEO approved the deal with Huawei, said Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur, chairman of the Optica Foundation board, in a statement. Policies related to our funding sources. ”
A spokeswoman for USC, which has produced two winners in the past two years, said it complies with U.S. regulations regarding reporting foreign gifts and contracts. “At the time the payments were made, there was no indication of suspected foreign involvement, and there is no such indication now,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Alan Willner, a professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Engineering who serves as a judge for the contest, did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for the University of British Columbia said the university had a relationship with the Optica Foundation and that at the time the award was awarded, neither the university nor the award applicant was aware that the award was being funded by a third party. .
Representatives for Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Arizona, home to one of the nation’s top optics schools, did not respond to repeated requests for comment about Huawei’s funding of the award winners.play video
Huawei optical experts
Huawei became a member in late 2021, shortly after the foundation’s parent organization Optica agreed to sponsor the contest, according to people familiar with the matter. The company plans to fund the event for 10 years, meaning it will award a total of $10 million based on past spending, according to private documents reviewed by Bloomberg.
The foundation is currently accepting proposals for the 2024 application cycle, which runs through May 21, and plans to award $100,000 each to 10 winners for three consecutive years.
Huawei has one executive on the 10-person competition selection committee. Hong Kong-based scientist Xiang Liu is Huawei’s chief optical standards expert, according to his LinkedIn profile.
According to his profile, he published a book on 5G communications technology in 2021 after working for Huawei’s U.S. arm Futurewei for more than seven years. Prior to receiving his PhD at Cornell University, Mr. Liu studied at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which operates under the State Council of China.
When the Optica contest begins in 2022, Liu thanked the foundation “for this great initiative” in a LinkedIn post and said he would serve on the selection committee. Chad Stark, executive director of the Optica Foundation and a signatory to the document seen by Bloomberg, thanked Liu for sharing information about the contest. He did not acknowledge Huawei’s role as the sole funder.
Last month, Liu was touted as the moderator of a virtual Optica session on “cutting-edge technologies revolutionizing connectivity between data centers.” Optica listed the panelists’ employers (all major U.S. technology companies) in marketing materials for the event, but described Liu only as a fellow at Optica and another professional organization.
Mr. Liu deferred questions to Huawei, and Mr. Stark did not respond to requests for comment.
