For months, UC Berkeley officials ignored my public records request.
So we sued.
They found the records.
Here's what they show:
thein.fo/2c892665a7aa0b…
All of the money was given *after* UC officials announced in January a "moratorium" on accepting Huawei's $$, in the wake of major federal criminal indictments.
scmp.com/news/china/dip…
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDJYzIQU4AAm0Bx.png)
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(This is the part where I mention that Huawei reps were meeting with the LA Times yesterday when I called their spokesman asking for comment. 👋, @NPearlstine!)
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDJdCMhVAAAYkWa.png)
I asked the school last year about the partnership. Even basic information, such as the names of faculty who worked on Huawei-funded research, was withheld from the public. Via UC spox Dan Mogulof:
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDJffg4VUAE7RSz.jpg)
Before Berkeley even responded in court, its attorneys sent me a stack of documents, including emails from this year.
We published every document here:documentcloud.org/search/project…
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDJglKwUUAEewv4.png)
First, while Huawei has given $$ to UC since 2013, the donations started coming in faster just as the Trump administration ramped up pressure.
Huawei gave $2.2M in 2018, up from $855K in 2017. And in the first quarter of this year alone, Huawei gave $2M.
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDJkxKwVAAA5dXM.png)
But in this case, since the research is technically public, an early heads up is ok--as long as there's no IP changing hands.
Emails I got from the school document two such attempts. In both cases, the request raised alarm bells among university staff once they were notified by professors.
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"Because of this current climate, people do not want to go on with this. Right now, China-U.S. relations are toxic…we are caught in the middle of this."theinformation.com/articles/huawe…
Situations like these are what make US officials so nervous about corporately-funded academic research.
Intel, VMWare, Amazon Web Services, Google and Nvidia are just a handful of the companies that have funded cutting-edge research at UC Berkeley.
hklaw.com/en/insights/pu…
UC Berkeley also granted a handful of employees of Huawei’s Futurewei research team access to its Marvell Nanofabrication Laboratory in late 2018.
But that arrangement was terminated earlier this year after US authorities sanctioned Huawei.
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDJrBUqU8AALTVw.png)
It's bad for all of us when public agencies feel empowered to ignore the law. Too often, the strategy works.