Huawei infiltrated summit at Facebook, sent trade secrets to China: lawsuit

A Bay Area subsidiary of a Chinese firm seen as a national security threat by U.S. officials infiltrated a meeting during a telecommunications summit at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters and sent information to its offices in China, a new lawsuit claims.

Jesse Hong says in the lawsuit that he was a software architect for Chinese smartphone giant Huawei’s subsidiary Futurewei Technologies in Santa Clara from 2014 until he was fired in March of this year. He alleges that in 2016, Huawei directed two Futurewei employees to deceive their way into an annual “TIP Summit” for telecommunications companies — most of them startups competing against Huawei — that was held at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park.

The alleged infiltration occurred after Facebook had denied Huawei’s request to attend the social networking firm’s closed-door meeting with U.S. companies, according to the suit. Huawei told Hong and two other Futurewei employees to register for the meeting using fake U.S.-company names, Hong claims in the suit, which was filed late last month in Santa Clara County Superior Court.

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