Huawei’s 1,500 U.S.-based staff grow wary over arrest
Worries about job security flare as Chinese company’s CFO awaits possible trial in U.S.
In the past year, hundreds of Huawei Technologies Co.’s U.S.based employees watched as Washington labeled the Chinese company a national-security threat and took steps to try to banish its products both in the U.S. and abroad.
That campaign—and the recent arrest of Huawei’s finance chief—has spawned job insecurity and uncomfortable party chatter. “When people find out I work at Huawei, the first thing they ask is, ‘Are you reading the stories? Are you concerned about your job?’ ” said an employee who fielded such questions at a social gathering Saturday, a week after Canada arrested Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou on behalf of the U.S. over fraud allegations. “The answer is yes.”
The maker of telecommunications equipment and smartphones says it employs about 1,500 people in the U.S. While many are Chinese citizens, the company says about 75% of them were hired locally in the U.S. They are spread around 18 sites, including its North American headquarters in Plano, Texas, a flagship research-and-development facility in Santa Clara, Calif., and offices in Chicago, San Diego and New Jersey.
Huawei, which is based in Shenzhen, China, says it also contributes to the U.S. economy in other ways. A spokesman said it is buying about $10 billion
(U.S.) of components from American companies this year. Huawei also spends about $8 million annually in research-and-collaboration partnerships with more
than 50 U.S. universities, including top institutes—a program that some Congress members are questioning.
Overall, Huawei has 180,000 global employees, with business in more than 170 countries. It took in $93 billion of revenue in 2017 and is the world’s biggest manufacturer of cellular-tower equipment and related telecom infrastructure. It is also the world’s No. 2 smartphone maker.
The U.S. government says Huawei could spy or disable communications under orders from the Chinese government. Huawei denies that, saying it is an employee-owned company that has never conducted espionage or sabotage on behalf of any country, and that carrying out such a cyberattack would ruin its worldleading business.
A 2012 congressional report effectively barred Huawei from selling its cellular equipment to major telecom carriers in the U.S.
Amid the government campaign
to blacklist the Chinese company, AT&T Inc. and Best Buy Co. this year halted sales of Huawei phones. No major U.S. wireless providers sell Huawei phones, though some online retailers, including Amazon.com, still sell them.
Huawei opened its North American headquarters in Texas in 2001. Scores of employees work there in engineering, patents, marketing, human resources and other divisions.
Huawei’s research-and-development subsidiary, called Futurewei, opened its Santa Clara facility in April 2011. There, about 700 engineers and scientists research wireless technology.
Some used to work at nowdefunct rivals, including Motorola Inc. and Canada’s Nortel Networks Corp. The engineers and scientists in Santa Clara design software and research artificial intelligence and telecom-network technology, among other things, helping Huawei become one of the world’s most prolific filers of patents.
Huawei opened another R&D facility in Bridgewater, N.J., in July 2011, to work on telecomnetwork technology. The company said it spent $276 million on U.S. research in 2014, the latest year for which data are available.
In October, Silicon Valley startup CNEX Labs Inc. alleged in Texas federal court that Huawei and Futurewei engaged in a multiyear plan to steal CNEX’s technology, which involves data storage. A lawyer for Huawei denied the allegations, which were made in a countersuit against Huawei after it filed a complaint last year that accused CNEX and its founder—a former Futurewei employee—of stealing trade secrets.
A Huawei spokesman had no comment for this article.
Huawei also has employees in the U.S who provide service to the few small American wireless and internet providers that use its hardware. That meager business is now in danger after the Federal Communications Commission earlier this year adopted a rule that would prohibit these small carriers from using federal subsidies—intended to help connect rural America to the internet— from buying gear from Huawei and another Chinese supplier, ZTE Corp.
Some members of Congress have publicly questioned Huawei’s partnerships with U.S. universities, saying they don’t want the company to benefit from American expertise. One of Huawei’s top executives said in July that “this criticism displays an ignorance of how contemporary science and innovation work.”
At the University of California’s Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research lab, Huawei spends at least $600,000 a year to be a corporate sponsor of three projects, said lab co-director Trevor Darrell. He said the funds are unrestricted, meaning Huawei can’t dictate how they are spent. The lab uses the money mostly to fund graduate students and fellows, Mr. Darrell said. In exchange for the funding, Huawei gets invited to lab events, which can be recruiting opportunities.
Mr. Darrell said he had been following Washington’s battle against Huawei and understands both sides.“We do make sure we don’t have a security risk,” he said. “We still accept charitable gifts, if they support open, basic research.”
Last week, Canada disclosed it had arrested Ms. Meng, Huawei’s finance chief and the company founder’s daughter, on Dec. 1 over allegations she lied to banks about Huawei’s ties to a company that did business in Iran, in violation of U.S. sanctions. She denies the charges.
As Huawei’s workers in the U.S. commuted home the day the news broke, they wondered whether they should begin looking for new jobs, said the employee who fielded questions at the Saturday party. He said job-security concerns at his office ranged from mild to doomand-gloom.
The employee, a U.S. citizen, called Huawei an excellent employer. It’s a “straight-up company,” he said, adding “when you have 180,000 employees, you’re going to have a few bad apples.”