American and British lawmakers are seeing red as Chinese tech giant Huawei has been found to be funding a major college research competition, a new revelation atop their recently discovered private donations and grants to universities on both sides of the pond.
Huawei, the telecommunications giant that Congress and Parliament alike have blacklisted, is the sole donor behind a research competition involving students from schools including Harvard which has given out millions of dollars in awards since 2022, Bloomberg reports. Because of Huawei's non-disclosure agreement with the Optica Foundation, the nonprofit administering the award, entrants to the contest included students at schools who have barred their students or faculty from having any link to Huawei. The Optica Foundation found that enlisting Huawei as a corporate sponsor of this competition fell in line with their internal ethics reviews, even as Huawei officially requested to be left a secret partner in the award which dispenses $1 million per year — 20 times more money than the next highest-paying award.
