Whistleblower: Meta Undermined US by Helping China With AI

A Meta whistleblower told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Wednesday that the company "repeatedly" undermined U.S. national security and betrayed "American values" by briefing China on U.S. artificial intelligence efforts in order to grow its business there.

Sarah Wynn-Williams testified during a Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism hearing that during her nearly seven-year tenure as director of public policy at Facebook, now Meta, "company executives lied about what they were doing with the Chinese Communist Party to employees, shareholders, Congress, and the American public."

"Meta's dishonesty started with a betrayal of core American values," Wynn-Williams, who worked at Meta from 2011 to 2017, said during her opening remarks.

"[Meta CEO] Mark Zuckerberg pledged himself a free-speech champion. Yet I witnessed Meta work hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party to construct and test custom-built censorship tools that silenced and censored their critics.

"When Beijing demanded that Facebook delete the account of a prominent Chinese dissident living on American soil, they did it and then lied to Congress when asked about the incident in a Senate hearing. The willingness to censor was not the only troubling thing I witnessed.

"I watched as executives decided to provide the Chinese Communist Party with access to Meta user data — including that of Americans. Meta does not dispute these facts," she said.

"They can't. I have the documents. As recently as this Monday, they claimed they do not operate their services in China — another lie."

Wynn-Williams has filed whistleblower complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice. She also published a memoir in March, "Careless People," in which she made allegations about Meta's company culture and China operations.

Meta won an emergency arbitration decision that temporarily stopped Wynn-Williams and her publisher from promoting the memoir or making disparaging statements against her former employer.

"This order is so expansive that it prohibits me from speaking with members of Congress," Wynn-Williams told the subcommittee. "This gag order was sought by a company whose CEO claims to be a champion of free speech. The American people deserve to know the truth."

Wynn-Williams, a New Zealand native, testified that Facebook's "secret mission" to get into China was called "Project Aldrin" and "was restricted to need-to-know staff."

"Meta built a physical pipeline connecting the United States and China," she said.

"Meta executives ignored warnings that this would provide backdoor access to the Chinese Communist Party, allowing them to intercept the personal data and private messages of American citizens. The only reason China does not currently have access to U.S. user data through this pipeline is because Congress stepped in.

"Meta started briefing the Chinese Communist Party as early as 2015. These briefings focused on critical emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence — the explicit goal being to help China outcompete American companies," she said.

"There's a straight line you can draw from these briefings to the recent revelations that China is developing AI models for military use, relying on Meta's Llama model."

Meta has pushed back on Wynn-Williams' testimony, calling it "divorced from reality" and "riddled with false claims."

"While Mark Zuckerberg himself was public about our interest in offering our services in China and details were widely reported beginning over a decade ago, the fact is this: We do not operate our services in China today," Meta spokesperson Ryan Daniels told The Hill.

Wynn-Williams countered during the hearing that Meta saying it doesn't operate services in China "is not accurate" and that "Facebook has an $18.3 billion business in China," including a partnership with Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent and basing its Oculus virtual reality operations in China.