China’s state-linked electronics giant Huawei has reportedly been “secretly funding cutting-edge research at American universities” through a Washington-based nonprofit called the Optica Foundation.
A Bloomberg News report on Thursday said Huawei is the sole funding source for a research competition administered by the Optica Foundation, which is in turn managed by a professional association that specializes in visible-light technologies such as fiber optics and lasers. The competition offers a hefty million-dollar reward for optical research projects and receives hundreds of submissions each year.
Bloomberg contacted university officials, applicants for the competition, and even one of the judges, and they all said they had no idea Huawei was involved. Reporters uncovered a private document that specifically instructed the Optica Foundation not to divulge the involvement of the Chinese tech company.
“The existence and content of this Agreement and the relationship between the Parties shall also be considered Confidential Information,” the document said. The agreement it outlines was struck in 2021 and set to last for ten years, which means it will disburse a total of $10 million in awards.
Optical offers ten other “early career prizes and fellowships” that do not appear to be linked to Huawei, but they also feature much smaller cash prizes and grants.
Optica told Bloomberg that Huawei donations were reviewed by legal teams and approved by the board. The foundation insisted there was “nothing unusual” about the practice of donors remaining anonymous.
Legal experts told Bloomberg that Huawei’s donations to Optica are probably legal, but definitely uncomfortable, and there could be some national security ramifications:
Research security specialists said the lack of transparency underlying the arrangement nonetheless violates the spirit of university and US funding-agency policies requiring researchers to disclose whether they’re receiving foreign money.
They also said some of the resulting research is likely to have both defense and commercial relevance. Topics the Optica Foundation singles out in an online post as being “of interest” include “undersea and space-based solutions for the global communications grid” and “high-sensitivity optical sensors and detectors.”
“It’s a bad look for a prestigious research foundation to be anonymously accepting money from a Chinese company that raises so many national security concerns for the US government,” said James Mulvenon, a defense contractor who has worked on research security issues and co-authored a seminal book on Chinese industrial espionage.
Texas A&M University’s security officer indicated the school would not have participated in the research competition if Huawei’s involvement had not been “heavily obfuscated.” Harvard also said it has a policy against “working with Huawei,” which is a bit awkward, because the chairman of the Optica Foundation board is Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur.
It seems disingenuous at best for the foundation to treat Huawei like any other corporate donor. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies have classified Huawei’s products as massive security risks that could be compromised by Chinese military intelligence. The company has been targeted by U.S. sanctions, placed on trade restriction lists, denied permission to purchase sensitive U.S. electronics components, and even prohibited from using Google’s popular Android smartphone operating system.
It may also be somewhat disingenuous for university officials to express complete surprise at Huawei’s involvement with the research competition after the Bloomberg report exposed it, since one of the ten members of the competition’s selection committee is a Huawei executive named Xiang Liu.
A report published two weeks ago found that companies linked to the People’s Liberation Army of China has spent over $24 million on lobbying the U.S. government since 2020. Huawei was by far the biggest spender on lobbyists, accounting for $10.8 million of the total.
The Chinese Communist Party’s influence over American universities, corporations, and government is a subject of growing concern. The Trump administration made some efforts to probe Chinese financial contributions to American universities, but those inquiries have not been pursued as diligently under President Joe Biden.
