Huawei backed research at US institutions becomes subject of House probe

By Daniel Flatley and Kate O'Keeffe

Two senior US lawmakers blasted a Washington-based foundation for secretly accepting money from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co., saying the move “flies in the face” of efforts to keep foreign adversaries from compromising US research.

The letter stemmed from Bloomberg News reporting earlier this month that showed how Huawei, which is blacklisted by the US government, secretly funded a research competition that has awarded millions of dollars through the Optica Foundation. The foundation is an arm of the nonprofit professional society Optica.

“Optica’s decision to accept Huawei money and distribute it to unknowing recipients flies in the face of the increased risk awareness and transparency we are all working toward in the research security space,” the top Republican and Democrat on the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology wrote on Thursday to Optica Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth Rogan.

 

“By masking the source of the Optica Foundation Challenge funding, your organization has compromised the ability of US research institutions to comply with the law,” they said.

Optica and Huawei didn’t immediately respond on Thursday to requests for comment.  

A Huawei spokesman said previously that the company and the Optica Foundation created the competition to support global research and promote academic communication. The spokesman said Huawei’s name was kept private to keep the contest from being seen as promotional and that there was no ill intent.

Optica’s Rogan said in a previous statement that some foundation donors “prefer to remain anonymous, including US donors” and that “there is nothing unusual about this practice.”

Representative Frank Lucas, the Republican chairman of the committee, and Representative Zoe Lofgren, the top Democrat, sent Rogan nine questions, including about what grants, donations or other outlays Optica has received from Huawei in 2022, 2023 and 2024, and what percentage of the Optica Foundation’s overall budget consists of donations from the company.

They also asked Rogan whether the foundation accepted funding from other entities based in China or other foreign countries of concern, and whether the foundation had granted anonymity to any of them. 

Lucas and Lofgren wrote that while the foundation told Bloomberg there’s nothing unusual about granting anonymity to donors, that statement ignores the context surrounding national security concerns emanating from China. They note that three Huawei-funded research prize recipients, both in 2022 and 2023, were affiliated with US institutions.

The two lawmakers said Optica’s failure to disclose Huawei’s involvement showed either deep ignorance of years of policymaking around research security or was a “willful strategy to launder funds from Huawei to anonymously bolster the Optica Foundation’s reputation and finances.”