After an eight-year lead-up, the U.S. prosecution of the Chinese company Huawei for theft of intellectual property and other crimes kicked into gear in September. A trial is finally underway.
The Wall Street Journal reported that according to prosecutors, Huawei Technologies “systematically stole trade secrets from American companies and misled banks about its business in Iran and North Korea” (September 9, 2026).
“Theft. Lies. Cover-ups. For 20 years that’s how Huawei, a global telecommunication company, victimized American companies and abused the American financial system to dominate telecommunications around the world,” Justice Department lawyer Taylor Stout told jurors….
The charges against the company include racketeering conspiracy, an offense indicating a pattern of illegal acts that typically is levied against organized crime. Other charges include conspiracy to steal trade secrets, bank fraud, wire fraud and violations of Iran sanctions.
Prosecutors say Huawei ran an elaborate trade-theft operation. Employees who stole valuable information from competitors got bonuses. One employee was caught sneaking photos at a trade show of the inside of rivals’ networking devices. The company allegedly paid a university professor to pose as a researcher interested in a company’s memory devices, when the real purpose was to obtain a chip so Huawei could copy it.
Today Huawei makes products from routers and switches to smartphones and is one of the world’s largest technology companies. Facing U.S. sanctions, it is effectively shut out from acquiring American technology. But it has become a major producer of artificial-intelligence chips in China and is critical to the country’s goal of becoming self-sufficient in some critical areas of AI….
A guilty verdict could lead to severe financial penalties and hurt Huawei’s ability to deal with some banks and customers around the globe.
It was also reported in September that, as requested by the government, the courtroom would be closed for a time to the public and the media to accommodate the testimony of three government witnesses. An October 5 article by Fierce Network is disapproving.
“The public explanation is that the witnesses or their families could face retaliation by a foreign government. Prosecutor Meredith Arfa told the court there were ‘no reasonable alternatives to closure,’ describing the problem as specific to the individual witnesses.”
Unthreatened
The author of the piece says “I don’t like this” closure even though “China and Iran are capable of putting pressure on witnesses and their families, and genuine witness-security concerns should obviously be taken seriously.”
On the other hand, he makes a living criticizing governments and “no one has threatened me. Yet.”
How this is relevant is unclear given the prevalence of transnational repression, which as practiced by the Chinese Communist Party often combines harassment of Chinese nationals overseas with threats against family members still living in the People’s Republic of China. The CCP also often acts to forcibly return Chinese nationals living overseas to China.
The Fierce Network writer suggests a compromise. “Why can’t their faces or identifying details simply be concealed with a paper bag with eyeholes or some sort of comedy Groucho Marx disguise?” Etc.
In other words, let there be concealment of witness identity, but weaker and more discomfiting concealment than prosecutors requested. The kind of concealment that determined agents of the CCP who have been allowed into the courtroom as members of the press or public can more easily penetrate.
