Futurewei, Huawei’s research division in the US which does research and development for Huawei on anything from 5G technologies to the video and camera equipment that Huawei may end up using in its devices, is reportedly seeking to distance itself from the parent company due to the ban that has been put on it by the US government, though Huawei will still own Futurewei going forward.
Neither Futurewei nor Huawei have confirmed what the research division hopes to gain by separating itself from Huawei, but because the reason behind the decision has a lot to do with the government ban on the Chinese tech firm it’s likely that the strategy is to make sure that it is able to continue operating its business in the US, which has a fair number of employees in a few different states with various offices in Seattle, Silicon Valley and Dallas among others.
As part of the separation that Futurewei is seeking it has reportedly stopped using the previous internal system it had its employees running for IT purposes and has since began using a new system in addition to banning Huawei employees from entering any of the office locations.
Employees are also no longer supposed to use Huawei’s name or logos when communicating through company tools, according to an employee who is said to work for Futurewei. Though the distancing may help Futurewei from being added to the US government’s entity list along with Huawei, the fear of Huawei being a threat to national security appears to have already hurt the research firm.
It reportedly works with a number of universities on various research and development projects but it may not be able to continue with some of them. According to the report some universities are considering whether or not it’s safe to continue working with Futurewei due to its ties with Huawei.
Separation from its parent company may help to ease any rising concerns that universities have, especially with Futurewei having already moved to suspend any exchange of information and funding between it and Huawei. Some universities, like the University of California-Berkeley, are still working with Futurewei to some extent but is no longer taking funding from the company, and it has imposed restrictions on Futurewei employees that it’s allowing to continue working with researchers from the school.
For example, Futurewei employees that are allowed on school grounds and allowed to work with university researchers must be US citizens or a permanent legal resident of the country. These employees must also sign a written document that states they will not share any of the sensitive information from the research with Huawei.
Futurewei’s efforts though may all be for naught as Indiana Congressman Jim Banks feels the two companies are one and the same, and wants to make it so that any universities that are working with companies who are deemed a security threat are restricted from receiving federal funding. This would potentially hurt Futurewei if Banks’ proposal to amend the National Authorization Act to allow this restrictions is approved as universities may feel continuing to work with the research company could fall under these guidelines.