A former Meta executive told a United States Senate committee that the company briefed China on US artificialintelligence (AI) efforts so it could grow its business there.
Sarah Wynn-Williams accused the social media company of undermining national security by briefing China on US artificial intelligence efforts.
“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,” Sarah Wynn-Williams testified, accusing the company of undermining national security.
Wynn-Williams served as director of global public policy at Facebook, now Meta, from 2011 until she was fired in 2017.
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“Throughout those seven years, I saw Meta executives repeatedly undermine U.S. national security and betray American values,” she continued. “They did these things in secret to win favour with Beijing and build an 18 billion dollar business in China”.
Wynn-Williams said Meta “ignored warnings” that building a “physical pipeline” between the US and China would provide China with backdoor access to US user data. The plans never materialized but only because lawmakers stepped in, Wynn-Williams said.
Wynn-Williams is also the author of a book called “Careless People,” that detailed her time at the social media company. The book sold 60,000 copies in its first week and reached the top 10 on Amazon’s best-seller list.
Meta used a “campaign of threats and intimidation” to silence the former executive, said senator Richard Blumenthal during the hearing.
Meta said in a statement to the Associated Press that Wynn-Williams’ testimony “is divorced from reality and riddled with false claims”.
“While [CEO] 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,” the statement continued.
Wynn-Williams also said Meta deleted the Facebook account of a prominent Chinese dissident living in the US after being pressured from China to do so.
Meta told the AP that the account of billionaire Guo Wengui violated Facebook’s rules because the account shared people’s passport numbers, social security numbers, national ID numbers and home addresses.
Zuckerberg, along with other Big Tech executives, have been trying to improve their standing with President Donald Trump’s administration in recent months through visits to the White House and Trump’s estate at Mar-a-Lago.
The hearing comes just days before Meta’s massive antitrust trial is scheduled to begin.
The US Federal Trade Commission’s case against the tech giant could force the company to divest Instagram and WhatsApp.
