Even though Optica has since said it will return Huawei’s money, prosecutors could still make a case that its foundation is liable under the False Claims Act for causing researchers to file fraudulent information to the U.S. government regarding their sources of funds, according to Paul Moore. Moore is a former chief investigative counsel at the U.S. Department of Education, where he focused on undisclosed foreign money in higher education.

The top Republican and Democrat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee wrote in a May 16 letter to Rogan that Optica’s earlier failure to disclose Huawei’s involvement in the competition either showed deep ignorance toward research security or was a “willful strategy to launder funds from Huawei to anonymously bolster the Optica Foundation’s reputation and finances.”

Optica’s spokesman said the group “is confident that we acted properly and in good faith” in its handling of the Huawei funding.

Same scientists

Huawei was able to secretly fund some of the same scientists the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies chose to sponsor for critical projects around the same time, according to government and university announcements. These scientists were selected for a DARPA effort to develop light-based computing chips; a study of thermal emission by the Office of Naval Research’s Sea Warfare and Weapons Department; and a research project on AI-driven machine vision systems that’s part of a group of studies being funded by the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 and a National Science Foundation initiative on semiconductors.

An NSF spokeswoman said that, while the agency can’t comment on individual cases, “we recognize that there exist efforts to lure U.S. researchers and organizations into situations in which they are, potentially unknowingly, failing to comply with federal requirements.” She said the NSF “will continue to track and mitigate risks of undue malign foreign influence on the U.S. scientific enterprise.”

An Office of Naval Research spokesman said that, at the time the researcher in question made their proposal to the Pentagon agency, the person hadn’t yet received the Huawei-funded prize. In addition, that researcher’s university — Vanderbilt — decided to proactively fund the proposal that had been awarded by Optica shortly after Huawei’s involvement in the competition became public and before Optica decided to return the company’s money, according to the Optica spokesman.

Vanderbilt University said that it made the decision to return the funds to the foundation after it learned that Huawei was the competition’s financial sponsor. “We take seriously the federal government’s restrictions on Huawei because of national security concerns,” the university said in a statement.

DARPA, a Pentagon arm famous for helping develop the internet and stealth technology, in 2021 launched a program to assess the risk of foreign influence on grant awardees. A spokeswoman said it’s based on both volunteered and public information.

Longtime relationship

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