(Bloomberg) -- House lawmakers broadened their investigation into Washington nonprofit Optica’s ties to Huawei Technologies Co. after Bloomberg News documented the scientific society’s decades-long relationship with the sanctioned Chinese telecommunications giant.
In a letter to Optica Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth Rogan, the top Republican and Democrat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee slammed the group’s partnership with Huawei as “deeply strange” and said Optica’s responses to their queries appeared inconsistent with Bloomberg’s latest findings, published in June.
“We are renewing our previous questions and document requests as well as broadening our inquiry to encompass additional concerns,” Committee Chairman Frank Lucas and ranking member Zoe Lofgren wrote. Among the July 29 letter’s requests are all of Optica’s communications with or about Huawei.
The lawmakers began investigating Optica in May after Bloomberg reported Huawei’s secret sponsorship of a research contest called the Optica Foundation Challenge, which has awarded millions of dollars to top university researchers since its inception in 2022. The following month, the additional Bloomberg findings showed Optica had cultivated its alliance with Huawei for decades — even as tensions over technology had soared between the US and China.
A spokesman for Optica said the group would continue cooperating with the congressional inquiry and that “scientific and engineering organizations have always worked with colleagues and countries around the globe to advance exploration and discovery.” Huawei didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Optica decided in June to return the funds that Huawei had committed to the research competition and to remove the company’s representation on the judges’ panel. In a June 3 communication to staff, Rogan said that the century-old professional society was reviewing its policies to ensure transparency.
The leaders of the committee said in their letter to Rogan that while Optica’s decision to return the Huawei money was a positive development, it “does not relieve the Committee’s concerns.”
Huawei’s undisclosed sponsorship of university researchers through the competition put some winners at risk of unknowingly violating bans at their schools on accepting money from the company. It also left some who applied for separate federal funding, such as Pentagon grants, unable to accurately disclose to the US government all of their sources of financial support, which can impact the government’s funding decisions.
A Huawei spokesman said in a statement last month that the company had funded the Optica-branded research competition to “motivate young scientists, encourage academic exchange, and promote global knowledge sharing.”
While the description Optica provided to lawmakers about Huawei’s role in the contest “may be technically accurate, it dramatically underplays the extensive role Huawei played,” the lawmakers wrote. “The extent of Huawei’s involvement in — and the scope of its influence over — the Challenge was far reaching and encompassed much more than mere funding,” they wrote.
More broadly, the lawmakers accused Optica of flouting security challenges posed by the evolving US-China relationship by deepening its partnership with Huawei while multiple US agencies piled sanctions on the company.
“The only demonstrable risk awareness Optica has displayed is the secrecy required to protect its reputation,” the lawmakers wrote.
They also faulted Rogan for making an undisclosed stop at Huawei’s headquarters during her travels to China in November, a visit that was flagged in a whistleblower complaint by an Optica employee.
The lawmakers wrote that it is “deeply strange that a US-based scientific society would put so much effort into connecting a sanctioned company to scientists conducting sensitive, cutting-edge research.”
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