Former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, accusing the social media giant of undermining national security and briefing China on US artificial intelligence efforts in order to expand its business there.
“We are engaged in a high-stakes AI arms race with China.” “During my time at Meta, company executives lied to employees, shareholders, Congress, and the American public about their dealings with the Chinese Communist Party,” Wynn-Williams stated in her prepared testimony.
Her book “Careless People,” an explosive insider account of her time at the social media giant, sold 60,000 copies in its first week and reached the top ten on Amazon’s best-seller list, despite Meta’s efforts to discredit the work and prevent her from discussing her experiences at the company.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, testified that Meta used a “campaign of threats and intimidation” to silence the former executive.
Wynn-Williams worked as the director of global public policy at Facebook, now Meta, from 2011 until her dismissal in 2017.
“During those seven years, I witnessed Meta executives repeatedly undermining US national security and betraying American values.” They did these things in secret to curry favor with Beijing and establish an 18 billion-dollar business in China,” she stated in her prepared remarks.
Wynn-Williams also claimed that Meta deleted the Facebook account of a prominent Chinese dissident living in the United States due to pressure from China.
According to Meta, billionaire Guo Wengui’s account, which shared personally identifiable information such as people’s passport numbers, social security numbers, national ID numbers, and home addresses, was removed because it violated Facebook’s policies.
And she claimed Meta “ignored warnings” that constructing a “physical pipeline” between the United States and China would give China backdoor access to US user data. These plans, known as the Pacific Light Cable Network, never materialized, but Wynn-Williams claimed that was only because lawmakers intervened.
Meta stated that Wynn-Williams’ testimony “is divorced from reality and riddled with false claims.” While Mark Zuckerberg was open about our interest in offering our services in China, and details were widely reported for over a decade, the truth is that we do not currently operate in China.”
Zuckerberg and other Big Tech executives have been attempting to improve their standing with President Donald Trump’s administration in recent months, including visits to Mar-a-Lago and the White House, as well as monetary donations, but it is unclear whether their efforts are paying off.
“This is a man who wears many different costumes,” Wynn-Williams stated about Zuckerberg. “When I was there, he wanted the president of China to name his first child, he was learning Mandarin, and he was censoring his heart out.
His new costume is either MMA fighting or free speech. We’re not sure what the next costume will be, but it will be different. It’s whatever brings him the closest to power.
The hearing occurs just days before Meta’s massive antitrust trial is set to begin. The Federal Trade Commission’s case against the tech behemoth may force the company to divest Instagram and WhatsApp.
