Mohammad Ali Fallahi, Master’s Degree in International Relations
If we reduce the Huawei case merely to espionage accusations, trade disputes, or violations of Iran sanctions, we have missed the more important part of the story. What has transpired between the United States and Huawei from 2019 to the present represents one of the purest examples of technopolitics in the contemporary international system—a point where technology, national security, economic power, technical standards, supply chains, and geopolitical competition are no longer separable from one another. Huawei is problematic for Washington not simply because it is a very large Chinese company, but because it is becoming a company that enables China to build a significant portion of its digital architecture without relying on the United States, and then export this same architecture beyond China. This is precisely the point at which a commercial enterprise becomes a variable in the balance of power.
In the official American narrative, a series of national security concerns and legal cases provided the basis for sanctioning Huawei. The U.S. Department of Justice accused Huawei and a number of its affiliated companies of crimes including conspiracy to steal trade secrets and activities related to circumventing Iran sanctions. It should be emphasized that many of these were raised in the form of judicial accusations and should not be treated as definitive proof of all claims without legal distinction.
In May 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce placed Huawei and a number of its affiliated companies on the Entity List. The legal consequence of this action was that the export and transfer of many goods, software, and technologies subject to U.S. export regulations to Huawei required a license. The official reason given by the U.S. government was that there were reasonable grounds to believe Huawei was involved in activities contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests. But the real turning point came in 2020. The United States expanded the Foreign Direct Product Rule against Huawei. The significance of this decision was extraordinary because Washington was no longer just targeting direct exports of American chips; it could now subject certain products manufactured in other countries to restrictions if they were produced with American technology, software, or equipment. This tool effectively transformed U.S. power in the global semiconductor supply chain into an extraterritorial geopolitical instrument. As a result, a company like Huawei, based in China, could also face restrictions for producing chips in Taiwan, Korea, or other countries, because a significant portion of chip design, manufacturing, and testing equipment in the global supply chain depended on American technology. The strategic objective was clear: cut off Huawei’s access not just to American products, but to the cutting edge of the entire global semiconductor ecosystem.
?But why was Huawei so important
At the beginning of the competition, America’s most significant concern was fifth-generation telecommunications networks. In the new communications architecture, telecommunications equipment is no longer just antennas and base stations. The fifth-generation network and subsequent generations will serve as the data transmission platform for industries, connected vehicles, urban infrastructure, factories, the Internet of Things, public services, and in the future, AI-based systems. Therefore, a country that supplies the foundational technology for these networks will have a presence in a highly sensitive layer of the host country’s digital infrastructure. The United States argued that dependence of critical networks on a Chinese vendor operating within China’s legal and political environment posed an unacceptable risk. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission in 2020 determined that Huawei posed a threat to the security of America’s communications supply chain, and Washington not only restricted domestic use of its equipment but also pressured its allies to reduce dependence on Huawei.
However, the issue was not merely about espionage. From a strategic perspective, Washington faced a scenario in which a Chinese company could become the primary supplier of communications networks for dozens of countries, acquire a large share of standard-essential patents, and play a decisive role in shaping future generations of communications. In such a situation, China would not only export products but also shape part of the technical rules of the global digital economy. This concern has not diminished. Data from 2026 shows that Huawei, alongside Qualcomm, Samsung, and Ericsson, remains among the major powers in 5G patent and standardization. The World Intellectual Property Organization has also reported that Huawei, with 7,523 international patent applications in 2025, was the largest applicant to the international patent system for the ninth consecutive year. This is a crucial point: technological power is not measured solely by the number of chips sold. A company that owns a vast body of technical knowledge, standard-essential patents, and fundamental contributions to setting communication standards wields structural power. This is the domain where the U.S.-China competition moves beyond the typical rivalry between two commercial enterprises.
The Iran Case: A Legal Catalyst in Service of a Geopolitical Strategy
Although in the grand narratives, the competition over 5G communications and artificial intelligence stands out, we should not forget that the most heated initial phase of direct U.S. confrontation with Huawei passed through the channel of Iran sanctions. The arrest of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer and daughter of the company’s founder, in Canada in December 2018 sent a major shock through the international system. The basis for the extradition request and the indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice was that Huawei, through a related company called Skycom, had sold telecommunications equipment to Iran and violated U.S. sanctions. Washington alleged that Huawei, by concealing its true relationship with this company, deceived international banks including HSBC, inadvertently exposing them to the risk of violating financial sanctions and processing illegal dollar transactions related to Iran.
The significance of this case from the perspective of international political economy lies at the intersection of two hegemonic tools of the United States: “the structural power of the dollar” and “control over technology.” In fact, before Washington could build the necessary domestic and Western consensus for complex technological and export sanctions, it used the powerful lever of secondary financial sanctions and its extraterritorial laws connected to Iran. The Iran sanctions violation case allowed Washington to transform Huawei from a stubborn commercial rival capturing global markets into a criminal entity violating international banking laws. These accusations provided the legal foundation and political legitimacy needed to pressure Western allies to join the campaign to restrict the Chinese tech giant.
Although Meng Wanzhou ultimately returned to China in 2021 after about three years of complex legal and diplomatic wrangling through a legal agreement, the historical role of the Iran case in this conflict had already been played. The accusation of violating Iran sanctions was precisely the catalyst U.S. policymakers needed to fully securitize the Huawei case. Following this event and citing these same judicial cases, the U.S. Department of Commerce placed Huawei on the Entity List, shifting the trajectory of the conflict from a legal-financial dispute related to the Middle East into an all-out technopolitical war over the future of the world’s digital architecture.
Sanctions Were Supposed to Weaken Huawei; But the Outcome Became More Complex
In the first stage, the sanctions did indeed deal a major blow to Huawei. The company’s access to advanced chip production by companies like TSMC was restricted, its smartphones were cut off from Google services, and its mobile phone business, once competing globally with Samsung and Apple, was severely damaged. But the decisive moment came in 2023. Huawei released the Mate 60 Pro phone, and technical analysis showed it was equipped with the Kirin 9000S processor, manufactured by the Chinese company SMIC, using approximately 7nm technology. The significance of the Mate 60 was more geopolitical than commercial. Washington had tried to limit China’s access to such capabilities, but a sanctioned company had managed, with the help of China’s domestic supply chain, to again produce an advanced 5G chip. From this point, the nature of the issue changed. The question in Washington was no longer simply “How do we cut Huawei off from American technology?” The harder question became: “Is the sanction regime pushing China to build replacements for American technology?” Huawei today is a concrete example of this paradox. Sanctions have raised the cost of technology development in China and still impose serious limitations; but simultaneously, they have created a massive economic and security incentive for localization of chips, operating systems, software, cloud, production equipment, and supply chains.
?In Which Areas Is Huawei Now Considered a Strategic Rival to America
The first area remains telecommunications infrastructure. According to Dell’Oro assessments, Huawei in 2025 ranked first in revenue in all six main telecommunications equipment categories monitored by the institute, and its share of the global market excluding North America reached a record of approximately 41%. So contrary to popular belief, Western sanctions have not eliminated Huawei from the global telecommunications market; they have merely shifted its geographic footprint.
The second area is semiconductors. Hisilicon, Huawei’s chip design arm, along with China’s domestic production chain, has become one of the most important projects for China’s semiconductor independence. In May 2026, Huawei even introduced a strategy known as the “Tao Scaling Law” and “Logic Folding” architecture, aimed at compensating for China’s limitation in transistor miniaturization through architecture, interconnection, packaging, and data movement optimization. Huawei claims this path in the long term can produce chips with density equivalent to 1.4nm technology—an ambitious claim still requiring independent verification. This is highly significant from a technopolitical perspective: America has built much of its advantage on controlling chokepoints in semiconductor technology. If China can circumvent part of the lithography limitation through system design, chiplets, advanced packaging, networking of large numbers of processors, and alternative methods, the effectiveness of the chokepoint control strategy will diminish.
The third area is operating systems and software ecosystems. HarmonyOS was Huawei’s response to losing access to the Google ecosystem. Its strategic importance goes beyond mobile phones, as Huawei has developed it for connected devices, automobiles, smart equipment, and other products. From China’s perspective, the success of such an ecosystem can reduce dependence on Android, Windows, and other Western software layers. Other areas include cloud computing, digital energy, data center equipment, and smart vehicle technology. Huawei’s 2025 annual report shows it is no longer just a telecommunications equipment or mobile phone manufacturer; it simultaneously operates in communications, computing, cloud, digital energy, consumer products, and smart vehicle solutions. Its 2025 revenue reached 880.9 billion yuan, and the company spent 192.3 billion yuan, equivalent to 21.8% of its revenue, on research and development. Over 114,000 people, about 54% of Huawei’s employees, worked in R&D. For technopolitical comparison, these figures show America is not facing an ordinary company; it is facing a massive technology complex that can integrate different technologies into a unified architecture.
The Most Sensitive Front of Confrontation Today: Artificial Intelligence
In the early years of Huawei’s sanctions, 5G was the focus. In 2026, the center of gravity of competition has clearly shifted to AI infrastructure. Huawei has developed the Ascend processor family as a Chinese replacement for Nvidia’s AI processors. Here it is necessary to avoid exaggeration. At the level of a single chip, Huawei is still not on par with Nvidia’s most advanced products across all metrics. China still faces limitations in producing very advanced nodes, high-bandwidth memory, energy efficiency, manufacturing equipment, and software maturity. Even technical studies published in 2026 on Ascend have discussed issues like lower maturity of some software tools, incomplete operator support, and difficulty in migrating from the CUDA ecosystem. However, if we move from the chip-to-chip level to the system level, a more concerning picture emerges for Washington. In the CloudMatrix 384, Huawei has connected 384 Ascend 910C processors through a high-speed communication architecture. Technical analyses have shown this architecture can compete with or surpass Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72 system on certain system-level benchmarks, though achieving this power requires far more chips and energy consumption. Simply put, Huawei is compensating for its weakness in lithography and single-chip performance through system engineering, networking, and scale. This is precisely one of the most significant technopolitical developments in recent years. America has tried to deny China the most advanced chips; Huawei’s response is: if I can’t make the best single chip, I’ll connect more chips together more intelligently.
The Ascend 950 Leap: A Phase to Be Taken Seriously
Developments in 2026 have further highlighted the importance of this path. The new generation Ascend 950PR has demonstrated significantly more attractive performance in trials with major Chinese customers than its predecessor, and Reuters has reported that companies like ByteDance and Alibaba intend to purchase it. Huawei has planned to ship approximately 750,000 units of the 950PR in 2026. This chip also facilitates migration of models previously designed for Nvidia’s CUDA ecosystem. This development may be more important than the difference in raw computing power. Nvidia’s advantage stems not just from the chip; its great strength is CUDA and its developer ecosystem. If Huawei can reduce the cost of migrating models from CUDA to the Ascend architecture, it will erode one of the deepest barriers to entry. Huawei’s connection with the Chinese model ecosystem is also strengthening. Ascend has become the infrastructure for running the new generation of DeepSeek models, and in April 2026, demand for the 950 generation increased following the release of DeepSeek V4. A domestic cycle is now taking shape: Chinese model, Chinese chip, Chinese cloud, Chinese network, and Chinese software. This cycle is what matters to American strategists. The main risk is not that Huawei will defeat Nvidia in the global market tomorrow. The real risk is that China can build an independent AI computing ecosystem that is good enough that it no longer becomes paralyzed by cutting off exports from an American company.
?Why Has America Directly Targeted Ascend
In May 2025, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security specifically issued a warning regarding the use of certain Ascend chips by Huawei, framing it within the risk of violating U.S. export controls. The Department itself explicitly explained these actions within the framework of maintaining America’s global superiority in artificial intelligence. This language is highly significant. At this stage, it is no longer just about the security of a telecommunications network. The conflict is over which country will control the computing infrastructure for the AI generation. From Washington’s perspective, if Ascend becomes the dominant standard in China, Nvidia loses part of the world’s largest potential AI market; but the issue is bigger than Nvidia’s revenue. Reducing China’s dependence on American processors also diminishes the power of American technology sanctions. Therefore, every successful Ascend chip has two effects: an economic effect against American companies and a geopolitical effect against America’s technological leverage.
Huawei’s Importance Extends Even Further
Huawei is now in a position to connect almost all layers of digital infrastructure: network equipment, data centers, Kunpeng processors, Ascend accelerators, Huawei Cloud, HarmonyOS, consumer products, and smart vehicle systems. American companies are individually stronger in many of these areas—Nvidia in AI processors, Google and Microsoft in software and cloud, Apple in consumer devices, and numerous other companies in semiconductors. But Huawei is striving to integrate these components into a unified Chinese ecosystem. For this reason, Huawei’s strategic value to Beijing is far greater than that of an ordinary company. On the other hand, China possesses a vast market that can be used to mature these technologies. Restricted access for American companies and policies of foreign technology substitution provide Huawei with the domestic market needed for testing, scaling, and cost reduction. From this perspective, one of the paradoxes of American policy is that external pressure in some sectors has helped strengthen the guaranteed domestic market for American competitors.
However, We Should Not Exaggerate the Failure of Sanctions
That Huawei has survived and even grown more powerful in some areas does not mean the export controls have completely failed. These restrictions still impose a heavy cost on China. Producing advanced chips in China is more difficult, more expensive, and weaker in terms of energy consumption and production yield compared to the global frontier. Advanced lithography equipment capacity, high-speed memories, and some software and design tools still create limitations. The sources related to the 950 program themselves have emphasized that production capacity may remain below demand. Therefore, the accurate assessment is that America has managed to affect the pace and cost of Huawei’s progress, but has not been able to stop the trajectory of progress. And it is precisely this difference that has complicated policy discussions in Washington.
Sanctions Have Transformed from an Economic Tool into a Global Regime of Technology Control
The latest developments in 2026 show that Washington continues to pursue the Huawei case with intensity. The U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security recently required German company Bosch to pay over $36 million in penalties for sending approximately $72 million worth of sensors and software to Huawei without the required license under the Foreign Direct Product Rule. This shows that the scope of restrictions extends beyond American companies and that the global supply chain remains under Washington’s surveillance. Simultaneously, on August 10, 2026, just a few days ago, the Chairman of the U.S. House Select Committee on China called for stricter enforcement of regulations regarding chip manufacturing facilities. The reason for this pressure was the experience in which chips designed by Sophgo and produced at TSMC were later found in Huawei’s AI processors. This demonstrates where Washington’s current concern lies: preventing indirect access by Huawei to advanced global production capacity.
The Huawei Case Has Now Expanded Beyond America
America has also largely succeeded in turning concern about Huawei into a Western issue. The European Union had recommended restrictions in previous years, but in 2026 proposals have been made to require member states to remove high-risk suppliers from critical infrastructure—a move widely seen as targeting Huawei and ZTE. Germany has also decided to gradually remove Chinese equipment from its 5G network segments. Thus, the Huawei competition has become part of a larger process that can be described as the gradual bifurcation of the global technology ecosystem. One side is organized around American technology, capital, chips, software, and export rules, and the other is striving to reduce its dependence on that same ecosystem.
Is America Really Afraid of Huawei?
If by fear we mean that Huawei in 2026 has surpassed American companies technologically in all areas, the answer is negative. In advanced semiconductors, AI software, and processing efficiency, significant gaps remain. Nvidia, American chip design companies, and the American technology ecosystem still maintain advantages in many key layers. But if we define fear as strategic concern, the answer is decidedly more affirmative. What worries Washington is not Huawei’s current level of power, but its vector of movement. In 2019, America sanctioned a company that had significant dependence on Western technology. In 2026, it faces a company that has its own AI processor, has developed its own operating system, remains a global leader in telecommunications networks, holds one of the world’s largest patent portfolios, builds AI data center architecture, has a broad presence in vehicle technology, and spends over one-fifth of its revenue on R&D. Therefore, Washington’s main issue is something larger than Huawei.
Huawei Is, in Fact, a Test of American Power in the Technopolitical Era
Since World War II, one of the sources of America’s structural power has been that a large portion of the foundational technologies of the global economy were either developed in America or their production chains depended on American intellectual property, software, equipment, capital, and companies. This web of dependencies has allowed Washington to use access to technology as a foreign policy tool. Huawei is one of the first companies attempting on a very large scale to reverse this relationship. If Washington can keep Huawei several generations behind for an extended period, it sends an important message to all Chinese companies: achieving advanced technology without access to the Western ecosystem is extremely costly. But if Huawei, despite being under one of the world’s most severe technology restriction regimes, can create a competitive ecosystem in telecommunications, semiconductors, and AI, the message will be completely different: dependence on America can be broken. From this perspective, Huawei’s most important product is no longer phones, 5G base stations, or even the Ascend chip. Huawei’s most important product for China is the model of technological independence.
And for this reason, the Huawei case must be considered one of the most important arenas of U.S.-China competition in this decade. Washington appears to be trying to control the flow of chips, equipment, and software; Beijing, in response, is trying to create a point where this control is no longer decisive. The fate of Ascend, HarmonyOS, next-generation networks, and Huawei’s semiconductor supply chain will show which side is more successful in this competition. Consequently, the U.S.-Huawei conflict is fundamentally not a dispute over a company. It is a dispute over a much more fundamental question: Will the United States be able to continue controlling the world’s major technological chokepoints in the age of artificial intelligence, or will China be able to build a parallel technological architecture in which America’s sanction power and export control gradually erode? In 2026, the answer remains unclear. America still holds a significant advantage in the most important technologies, and its restrictions have imposed real and heavy costs on China. But Huawei is no longer a company that can be sidelined by cutting off access to a few suppliers. What is taking shape is a competition between two technological ecosystems, and for this reason, Huawei will likely remain in the coming years not on the margins, but at the very center of the strategic rivalry between Washington and Beijing.