Seagate agrees to pay US gov $300m for selling Huawei some hard drives

pcgamer.com:

Seagate has agreed to pay the US Department of Commerce $300 million in total over the next five years for selling Huawei some hard drives. 

The US government's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) alleged that Seagate broke rules on exporting to the China-headquartered company when it sold some hard drives to it over the course of 13 months from August 2020 to September 2021. 

In terms of the timeline here, these sales occurred after the US government updated its rules for companies trading with Huawei to include fresh sanctions on what can or can't be sold to the company. These changes happened in May 2020, and prior to this BIS had already added Huawei to its 'Entity List(opens in new tab)' which limited the company's access to US-made tech. 

These measures started as a response to the US belief that Huawei «engaged in activities contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests and its non-U.S. affiliates pose a significant risk of involvement in activities contrary to the national security of the United States,» as noted in a BIS FAQ(opens in new tab) on the sanctions. Huawei has previously denied the claims(opens in new tab).

All of which has seen Huawei ramp up internal R&D efforts to counteract the sanctions, and more recently report a major profit loss(opens in new tab) from 2022 to 2023. Meanwhile US companies that may have previously supplied Huawei have seen that business dry up.

Seagate, however, holds that it didn't break any sanctions when selling heaps of hard drives to Huawei.

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