Huawei racketeering trial begins in Brooklyn federal court

A trial against Chinese tech giant Huawei began in Brooklyn on Wednesday. Federal prosecutors say the company ran a criminal operation for about 20 years. They claim Huawei stole trade secrets from five American companies. This includes software code from Cisco and a robot testing device from T-Mobile. Prosecutors also say Huawei misused the US financial system and helped Iran spy on its own people. Huawei's lawyers disagree. They say prosecutors are focusing on a few individual employees, not the whole company. They pointed out that Huawei has around 200,000 workers in 170 countries. Huawei is the world's biggest supplier of wireless network equipment, but the US and several Western countries have already banned it from their networks over security concerns.