Fraunhofer researchers cooperate with Huawei – traffic light politicians fear espionage

Berlin Europe’s leading organization for applied research, the German Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, is attracting the attention of digital and security politicians. The reason: Several Fraunhofer institutes work together with the Chinese high-tech group Huawei.

Regardless of growing international concerns about possible espionage, the Fraunhofer Society is cooperating with the controversial company. A spokesman for the research company explained that they are working with Huawei “in the context of projects”. Fraunhofer has 76 institutes in Germany with over 30,000 employees.

The Fraunhofer spokesman did not provide any specific information on the cooperation with Huawei. “As a matter of principle, we cannot publish lists of projects and contractual partners collectively, also for contractual and data protection reasons,” he explained.

Maximilian Funke-Kaiser, digital politician of the FDP in the Bundestag, advises against “any cooperation with Huawei due to moral concerns and security risks”. He emphasizes that science must also be aware that corporations and research partners from authoritarian states are “never free from political influence”. “Any other idea would be naive.”