- Huawei's best defense may be Brooklyn
- After 14 years of allegations, the evidence meets a jury
- China chose soft power while the U.S. prioritized war powers; America’s economy will be the casualty
After 36 years of covering telecom, it feels as though every theme, thread, and tectonic market shift I have ever chronicled has been tied up in a big bale of drama by federal prosecutors and dumped into a Brooklyn courtroom. The mainstream media will inevitably view this case through a familiar lens: another proxy battle in the geopolitical knife fight between Washington and Beijing.
That misses the point.
This trial is not merely about the Justice Department versus Huawei, or even the United States versus China. It is an early skirmish in what is becoming a global struggle for control of the infrastructure that will host, fuel and govern the world’s AI economy over the next half-century. Everything I have covered since the dawn of modern networking leads to this intersection. I know. Pretty cool, right?
America's home-field disadvantage
For almost one and a half decades, Washington has alleged that Huawei is a vehicle for Chinese state espionage. Yet when the U.S. government’s case was finally filed, it contained no allegations of spying; instead, it alleged bank fraud, sanctions violations and racketeering. In September, the question before the jury will be simple: does the evidence match the story?
American government lawyers may assume that holding the trial in Brooklyn gives them a home-field advantage, given that Huawei is headquartered in Shenzhen, 8,000 miles away. But the home field is my adopted hometown of New York. And in the words of the blue-eyed poet, if Huawei can make it here, it can make it anywhere.
Personally, I would not assume that 12 New Yorkers, strong and true — even if some of them are Mets fans — will swallow every claim placed before them by a government suit. New Yorkers are famously tough, independent thinkers. A populace that has waited five decades for the Knicks to win the finals is not known for blind faith. We still want to know what caused Building 7 to collapse. We remain skeptical about the iffy CCTV coverage outside Jeffrey Epstein's cell. And we continue to debate whether Covid came from a mackerel market in Wuhan or, perhaps, the coronavirus laboratory next door that specialized in developing… coronaviruses?
For New Yorkers, skepticism is not a political position. It is a survival skill. I'm not a government lawyer (thank God), but I wouldn't want to stand before that Brooklyn jury with anything less than a bulletproof case. Based on 36 years covering this industry, I'm not at all sure the government's attorneys have one.
Menza menz evidence
Absent America's accusation that Huawei is a vehicle for Chinese state espionage, the remaining charges are, frankly, weak sauce. Among them are sanctions violations involving Iran, which sounds scandalous until you discover that Microsoft, one of Huawei's direct competitors, settled sanctions violations involving Iran, Cuba, Syria, Russia and Crimea. In total, Microsoft admitted 1,339 (yes, that’s thousand) violations and paid approximately $3.3 million in penalties.
That works out to about $2,464 per violation. More than a parking ticket, but less than the federal penalty for bringing a contraband mango into the United States. In the absence of anything juicier, the government's narrative increasingly boils down to grunting "USA good, China bad," spitting some chew, and refilling a red Solo cup with warm Bud Light from a keg.
The China syndrome
China's narrative is different.
Huawei largely abandoned attempts to win the argument years ago. Instead, after Washington blacklisted the company and escalated sanctions, it stopped trying to persuade its critics and started building. Every attempt by America and its allies to choke off Huawei's access to technology became an aggressive R&D stimulus program. They used to say that when America sneezes, the world catches a cold. As it turns out, when America sneezes, Huawei just develops its own immunity.
Instead of crushing the company, sanctions accelerated domestic innovation, expanded its market footprint, and forced it to design its own advanced 5G chips. Even the financial math backfired; after absorbing the initial blow, Huawei staged a relentless recovery, pushing its annual revenue back up to a massive 880.9 billion yuan ($127.5 billion) — its second-highest total in company history — while deploying infrastructure across roughly 90% of the world's countries. Meanwhile, European nations — dutifully following Washington's geopolitical script — have wasted tens of billions of dollars tearing out and replacing perfectly functional, entirely uncontaminated telecom equipment for absolutely no operational reason. One side tried to litigate Huawei out of existence. The other treated sanctions as a product-development roadmap.
The integrated infrastructure stack
The deeper problem for Washington is that Huawei is no longer simply a telecom company. For more than twenty years, China has understood that communications networks are only one layer of a much larger infrastructure stack that includes energy, cloud, AI, manufacturing, logistics, finance, automation and geopolitical influence. While America was telling stories about a telecom monster under the bed, China was financing ports, railways, power systems, data centers, subsea cables and digital transformation projects across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
It wasn't selling products. It was offering to help build economies. And most of the world took it up on its offer. Developing countries rarely choose technology because somebody gives them a finger-wagging lecture about democracy while funding conflicts among their neighbors. They choose technology because it solves problems, creates jobs, expands connectivity and often comes with financing attached.
In the 20th century, America understood the power of that model. China studied it, copied it and improved it. It’s what it does. As America drifted away from soft power and toward war powers, it turned Huawei into a bogeyman instead of confronting a more uncomfortable reality. China is competing. America is litigating. One side speaks softly and carries a debt-financing chequebook. The other chats shit and files lawsuits.
America's false narrative
China is not winning infrastructure projects around the world because it has the better story. It is winning because it did the work. And in a stunning development, it turns out developing countries rather like it when you help build physical and digital infrastructure that improves their lives, expands opportunity and raises living standards, rather than bombing them, imposing sanctions and telling them what they should be afraid of.
Washington will continue searching for mythical backdoors and tilting at Chinese windmills. The problem is that narratives eventually collide with reality. And in a courtroom, reality has a habit of stripping the paint from flimsy accusations.
After 20 years of allegations, the evidence meets a jury.
Stephen M. Saunders MBE is a communications analyst and USPTO-registered inventor examining how digital infrastructure — 5G, cloud, and AI — is reshaping industry, power and society, as well as underpinning the emerging, ubiquitous global digital economy. As anchor of FNTV and a longtime industry insider, he focuses less on growth narratives and more on execution, risk and how hyperscale technology is distorting markets, governance and society at scale.
Opinion pieces from industry experts, analysts or our editorial staff do not represent the opinions of Fierce Network.