Huawei will face the U.S. government in a federal criminal trial in New York in September 2026
The trial follows more than two decades of allegations, investigations, sanctions and hearings
As part of its preparations for the case, the FBI recently contacted former Light Reading journalists regarding a trade-show incident involving Huawei that occurred two decades ago
In September 2026, Huawei will face the U.S. government in a federal criminal trial in New York. The company stands accused of racketeering, sanctions violations relating to Iran and trade-secret theft following a two-decade campaign of investigations, sanctions, hearings, intelligence briefings and public allegations.
The case, United States of America v. Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., et al. (Case No. 1:18-cr-00457) may ultimately determine whether the government's evidence matches the rhetoric that has surrounded Huawei for more than 20 years.
A few months ago, as part of its preparations for the case, an FBI agent contacted me seeking help locating two former Light Reading journalists and colleagues regarding a story we had published about Huawei at the turn of the century.
I did not reply. (I grew up on the Ferrier Estate in South London; if the feds want to talk to me, they will need to bring lawyers and guns, not voicemails.)
When I mentioned the inquiry to Ray Le Maistre, one of the journalists in question, his response was immediate: "Why are they asking you for my contact information? Wait until the FBI hears about this thing called LinkedIn!"
(How we all laughed at the silly man from the FBI. Good one, Raymondo.)
The story itself concerned an incident at a trade show two decades ago. According to Peter Heywood, Light Reading's co-founder and the editor who handled the coverage at the time, Fujitsu staff allegedly discovered a Huawei employee trying to take photos of equipment on its stand after the exhibition had closed to the public, possibly having removed a panel to look inside. Ray wrote the original story, "Huawei in Spying Flap." Peter says he subsequently "interviewed" the alleged perpetrator through a Huawei PR representative acting as a translator. (This was back in ancient times, when trade journalists did journalism things like this, armed with their quill pens and fax machines and whatnot.) Huawei then fired the interloper.
That was it.
No infiltration of a nuclear weapons laboratory. No submarine rendezvous in the South China Sea. No spooks exchanging microfilm beneath a flickering streetlamp. Just a bloke at a trade show taking snaps of the inside of a piece of telecoms equipment.
Yet, according to Heywood, the FBI recently followed up with him as well and offered to travel all the way to Looe, a small town on the Cornish coast just the other side of the Middle of Nowhere, to interview him about the incident.
Which raises an obvious question. Is this the smoking gun underpinning one of the most consequential technology prosecutions of the century? Are government attorneys planning to dramatically swivel toward the jury, reach into a briefcase, and produce a wrinkled, sepia-faded photograph?
"And here, ladies and gentlemen of the jury... is that very photograph."
(Gasps. Audible murmuring in the public gallery. Someone drops a pencil. The judge bangs his gavel furiously. A Huawei lawyer quietly sobs into a handkerchief... scene.)
I mean, this is not really the stuff of Perry Mason (periwinkle, maybe).
If this incident represents a significant pillar of the government's case, then it is a surprisingly slender one. Huawei may be guilty of many things (inserting spyware in telecom equipment isn't one of them). But if the fate of a global technology company ultimately turns on the forensic examination of a trade-show anecdote from 2006, then the story says at least as much about the prosecution as it does about the accused. And if this really is the smoking gun, it appears to have been loaded with remarkably little powder.
Stay tuned for more analysis of the lawsuit and the related, increasingly bonkers Sino-American biff in an op-ed that I will be publishing here tomorrow. As ever, reality appears determined to outperform satire.
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.