The criminal trial of Huawei Technologies, the case that came to symbolize Washington's technology crackdown on China, opens in a New York courtroom more than eight years after the company was indicted. The case had languished for eight years amid pandemic-related court delays and the sheer volume of evidence to be established. Its return to court now — roughly 10 days before Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the United States — is sharpening tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Jury selection in the criminal case against Huawei begins at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, according to Bloomberg and Nikkei Asia. The jury will weigh whether the evidence submitted by the U.S. government matches the charges in the indictment. Prosecutors have estimated that proving their case could take up to three months.
Federal prosecutors indicted Huawei in 2018, during President Donald Trump's first term, on charges including stealing technology from competitors. Canadian police, acting on a U.S. request, arrested and detained Huawei Deputy Chairwoman Meng Wanzhou at the time, touching off what has been described as a new Cold War among the United States, Canada and China. Beginning in 2019, Washington restricted Huawei's access to American technology on national security grounds and placed the company on the Commerce Department's Entity List blacklist. The Federal Communications Commission separately barred U.S. companies from using government subsidies to buy Huawei equipment.
Prosecutors Allege a Dedicated In-House Unit; Huawei Says Conduct Unrelated to U.S. Firms
Huawei faces a total of 12 counts, including allegations that it misappropriated trade secrets from six American companies — among them a network equipment maker, an antenna technology firm and a memory hardware architecture developer.
Prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York allege that Huawei maintained an internal department called the Competition Management Group and systematically stole rivals' technology. Among the incidents cited in the indictment is a 2013 episode in which a Huawei employee slipped an arm component from a mobile-testing robot into a laptop bag and carried it out of a research lab run by U.S. carrier T-Mobile. Huawei is also charged with violating sanctions on Iran and North Korea. The indictment says Huawei affiliates referred to Iran by the code name "A2" and North Korea as "A9" while deceiving financial institutions and doing business in both places.
Huawei argues that most of the conduct at issue took place outside the United States and therefore falls beyond the reach of American criminal law. The company denies the charges and says the pattern of racketeering activity alleged by prosecutors has no connection to U.S. companies. In a filing with the court, Huawei said the ultimate goal of prosecuting the company was to gain leverage in the trade war between the United States and China, and that the U.S. government had bundled unrelated charges into a single indictment.
Sanctions Seen Spurring Innovation; Malaysia Weighs First Foreign Government Adoption of Huawei Chips
A ruling that accepts prosecutors' arguments and imposes heavy fines and damages would carry significant consequences for U.S.-China relations. The Justice Department could not seize assets inside China but could assert claims over Huawei's assets in the United States. Sunny Cheung, a researcher at the Jamestown Foundation, said the case rests on criminal allegations of sanctions evasion and intellectual property infringement, but that a guilty verdict would validate Washington's efforts to police Chinese technology in the U.S. market. The case could have wider repercussions and may further push other countries to take action against Huawei, he said.
Others argue that the sanctions accelerated innovation at Huawei. Lizzi Lee, a fellow at the Asia Society, said the restrictions forced the company to rework its innovation strategy and build a domestic supply chain for its own components and systems. Huawei's revival is one of the clearest examples of the unintended consequences of technology controls, she said.
A foreign government may also soon place a large order for Huawei chips over U.S. objections. Malaysia is considering adopting Huawei's Ascend 910C artificial intelligence chip as core infrastructure for a state-led AI project worth about $494 million (665.1 billion won), according to Bloomberg. Such a decision would mark the first time a foreign government has officially adopted a Chinese-made AI accelerator.
The State Department and the Trump administration have warned that using Huawei chips could violate U.S. export rules and raise concerns about leaks of classified information and threats to national security. Malaysia has said the review is a purely commercial decision based on national interest. Mindful of U.S. objections, however, Kuala Lumpur is discussing a separate tender process open to American companies such as Nvidia, and plans to send National Security Council officials to Washington later this month to discuss the matter with U.S. counterparts.
