Sarah Wynn-Williams, Facebook’s former head of global public policy, plans to testify to Congress on Wednesday, detailing allegations that Meta executives helped China advance its AI capabilities and undermine US national security.
Wynn-Williams, who worked at Facebook between 2011 and 2017, filed a whistleblower complaint in March with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, now Meta, said she was fired eight years ago for poor performance.
She also published a memoir that month, “Careless People,” where she made allegations about Meta’s company culture and China operations. A spokesperson previously told Business Insider that the “false and defamatory book should never have been published.”
At the heels of the book’s release, 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.
The ruling did not stop the book from becoming a No. 1 bestseller.
“This gag order was sought by a company whose CEO claims to be a champion of free speech,” Wynn-Williams’ draft testimony says. “The American people deserve to know the truth.”
“Sarah Wynn-Williams’ testimony is divorced from reality and riddled with false claims,” a Meta spokesperson wrote in an email to BI. “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.”
Representatives for Wynn-Williams declined to comment.
A draft of Wynn-Williams’ opening statement, which Business Insider obtained, includes allegations that Meta established a clandestine relationship with China, providing user data to the Chinese Communist Party and establishing a “physical pipeline” between the US and China.
During President Donald Trump’s first term, the administration killed a project from Google and Facebook that would have established an 8,000-mile-long broadband cable between the US and Hong Kong.
Below is Wynn-Williams’ draft opening statement she plans to give before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee:
Chairman Hawley, Ranking Member Durbin and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Sarah Wynn-Williams, and I served as Director of Global Public Policy at Facebook, now Meta, for nearly seven years starting in 2011. Throughout those seven years, I saw Meta executives repeatedly undermine US national security and betray American values. They did these things in secret to win favor with Beijing and build an $18 billion dollar business in China. We are engaged in a high-stakes AI arms race against China. And during my time at Meta, company executives lied about what they were doing with the Chinese Communist Party to employees, shareholders, Congress, and the American public. I sit before this Committee today to set the record straight about these illegal and dangerous activities. Meta’s dishonesty started with a betrayal of core American values. 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. They can’t. I have the documents. As recently as this Monday they claimed they do not operate services in China. Another lie. In fact, they began offering products and services in China as early as 2014. That hasn’t stopped. Their own SEC filings from last year show that China is now Meta’s second biggest market. Meanwhile, Meta’s AI model — Llama — has contributed significantly to Chinese advances in AI technologies like DeepSeek. Facebook’s secret mission to get into China was called “Project Aldrin” and was restricted to need-to-know staff. There was no bridge too far. Meta built a physical pipeline connecting the United States and China. 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 US 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. 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’s internal documents describe their sales pitch for why China should allow them in the market by quote “help[ing] China increase global influence and promote the China Dream.” The truth about what has gone on in China matters. I filed a shareholder resolution asking Meta’s Board to investigate its activity in China. And I filed whistleblower complaints with the SEC and the DOJ. The measure of how important these truths are is directly proportional to the ferocity of Meta’s efforts to censor and intimidate me. I relied on their commitment given in 2018 that they would waive their rights to pursue forced arbitration. Despite that public commitment, they brought a case against me for hundreds of millions of dollars. Now they have a legal gag order that silences me even as Meta and their proxies spread lies about me. This order is so expansive that it prohibits me from speaking with Members of Congress. 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. Meta has been willing to compromise its values, sacrifice the security of its users, and undermine American interests to build its China business. It’s been happening for years, covered up by lies, and continues to this day. I am here at considerable personal risk because you have the power and the authority to hold them accountable. Thank you for your time and attention to this critical matter.
