On Wednesday, former Meta (Facebook) executive whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams testified before the U.S. Congress, accusing the internet technology company of jeopardizing U.S. national security by entering the Chinese market and providing American AI advancements to the Chinese Communist Party.
In the afternoon of Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee held a hearing titled “Moment of Truth: Oversight of Meta’s Relationships with Foreign Entities and Statements to the U.S. Congress”.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, former executive at Meta, pointed out during her testimony that as early as 2015, Meta began providing briefings to the Chinese Communist Party, with a focus on key emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, with the explicit goal of helping China surpass American companies.
Wynn-Williams served as the Global Public Policy Director at Facebook from 2011 to 2017.
In her testimony, she stated that Facebook, in order to please the Chinese regime, established a $18 billion business in China and secretly engaged in these activities.
Her book “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism” documenting explosive behind-the-scenes events during her time at Facebook was published on March 11.
Despite Facebook’s efforts to prevent her from speaking out about her experiences, the book became a bestseller after its release, reaching the top 10 on Amazon’s bestseller list.
Senator Josh Hawley, who led the hearing, questioned why Facebook was so eager to prevent the witness from revealing what she knew. He highlighted the long-standing ties between Mark Zuckerberg and the Chinese government, noting that Facebook has deceived the American people multiple times.
Hawley added, “Facebook doesn’t want you to hear her testimony, and I dare say, China may also not want you to hear her testimony.”
In her testimony, Wynn-Williams stated, “I witnessed Meta collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party to craft and test tailored censorship tools, suppressing and censoring their critics.”
She also mentioned that despite warnings, Meta was constructing “physical pipelines” between the U.S. and China to allow the CCP access to American user data through a backdoor, a plan that was thwarted only because of lawmakers’ intervention.
Meta issued a statement denying Wynn-Williams’ testimony. Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, publicly stated that while the company is interested in expanding business in China, it is not currently operating there.
However, Wynn-Williams contradicted this statement in her testimony.
She said, “Just this Monday (April 7), they (Meta) claimed again that they do not operate services in China. This is another lie. In fact, they have been offering products and services in China since as early as 2014. This has not stopped. Documents they submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year show that China is now Meta’s second largest market.”
Meanwhile, Wynn-Williams pointed out that Meta’s AI model Llama has assisted the CCP in the development of AI technologies like DeepSeek.
After the hearing, Senator Hawley stated that he will further investigate whether Zuckerberg misled the public during his congressional testimony, and reviewing more internal documents provided by Wynn-Williams for potential referral to the Department of Justice is also an option.
This hearing comes ahead of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust trial against Meta scheduled to start on April 14. The case could potentially force the tech giant to divest Instagram and WhatsApp.