TLDR:
- Former Meta executive Sarah Wynn-Williams will testify that Meta secretly aided China’s AI development while misleading Congress
- Wynn-Williams claims Meta briefed Chinese officials on emerging technologies as early as 2015
- She alleges there’s a connection between these briefings and China’s military AI development using Meta’s LLaMA model
- Meta spokesperson Andy Stone denied these claims as “divorced from reality”
- The testimony comes amid escalating US-China tensions over technology and trade
A former high-ranking Meta executive is preparing to deliver explosive testimony to Congress alleging that the company secretly assisted China’s artificial intelligence ambitions while misleading lawmakers and the public about its actions.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, who served as Meta’s director of global public policy, will testify Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism. Her prepared remarks, first obtained by NBC News, outline serious accusations about Meta’s relationship with China.
Wynn-Williams claims that Meta began briefing the Chinese Communist Party on emerging technologies, including AI, as early as 2015. “The explicit goal being to help China outcompete American companies,” she states in her testimony.
Meta’s Alleged China Connections
According to the whistleblower, Meta pitched their entry into China as a way to “help China increase global influence and promote the China Dream,” based on internal documents she claims to possess.
“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,” Wynn-Williams will tell lawmakers, referring to Meta’s large language model.
The hearing comes at a time of growing concern in Washington about China’s rapidly advancing AI capabilities. In January, Chinese startup DeepSeek released an AI model that rivaled those from US companies like OpenAI, triggering market volatility and intensifying competition.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone firmly denied the allegations, describing Wynn-Williams’ testimony as “divorced from reality and riddled with false claims.” Stone stated that while Meta explored offering services in China over a decade ago, it does not operate there today.
Wynn-Williams counters this claim, calling it “another lie” and pointing to corporate filings that reference revenue Meta receives from Chinese advertisers despite Facebook being banned in China over censorship issues.
Controversial Memoir
This testimony is the latest development in an ongoing controversy that began earlier this year when Meta successfully blocked the publication of Wynn-Williams’ memoir, “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.”
The book, which provides insights into Meta’s internal culture and its alleged cooperation with China’s censorship regime, had received early praise and was available for pre-order until Meta intervened in arbitration proceedings and secured a gag order against its release.
Despite the legal challenges, Wynn-Williams’ memoir has climbed to third on Amazon’s Most Read Nonfiction list, attracting attention from lawmakers including Senator Josh Hawley, who chairs the subcommittee where she will testify.
Among her most serious allegations, Wynn-Williams claims that Meta developed custom censorship tools for the Chinese government and considered sharing user data with Chinese authorities.
“I watched as executives decided to provide the Chinese Communist Party with access to Meta user data—including that of Americans,” she says in her draft testimony.
Other Controversies
The whistleblower’s claims come amid other controversies involving Meta’s AI practices. In a separate case, authors including comedian Sarah Silverman filed a lawsuit alleging that Mark Zuckerberg approved using pirated books to train Meta’s AI, even after his team warned the material was illegally obtained.
These allegations emerge as tensions between the US and China continue to escalate. Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on imports, followed by the administration imposing a 104% tariff on Chinese exports after China implemented a 34% tariff on American products.
China has vowed to “fight till the end,” calling the US actions “blackmail” and refusing to back down, according to a statement posted on X by the country’s embassy in the US.
🔵The U.S. tariff escalation threat against China compounds its mistake and further exposes its nature of blackmail, which China will never accept.
🔵China will fight till the end if the U.S. side is bent on going down the wrong path.— Chinese Embassy in US (@ChineseEmbinUS) April 8, 2025
The timing of Wynn-Williams’ testimony coincides with Meta’s recent release of its Llama-4 AI models, which the company claims can compete with the best closed-source models without fine-tuning.
Senator Hawley has expressed the need to investigate Wynn-Williams’ claims, suggesting her testimony could reveal whether Meta executives misled Congress about the company’s dealings with China.
Meta’s representatives maintain the company’s innocence, but Wynn-Williams insists she has documentation to back her claims: “Meta does not dispute these facts. They can’t. I have the documents.”
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