Meta Accused of Assisting China’s AI Ambitions, Whistleblower to Tell Congress – Decrypt

A new testimony is set to raise uncomfortable questions about Meta’s relationship with China and its long-term implications.

That’s the explosive allegation from Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former senior Meta executive turned whistleblower, who will testify Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism.

In prepared remarks first obtained by NBC News, Wynn-Williams accuses Meta of secretly aiding the Chinese Communist Party while misleading Congress, employees, and the American public.

“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 say, referring to Meta’s internal presentations to Chinese officials as early as 2015. 

Meta did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.

The hearing comes at a moment of mounting concern in Washington about China’s accelerating AI capabilities, especially after Chinese startup DeepSeek shocked global markets in January by releasing a model that rivaled U.S. giants like OpenAI, triggering a $600 billion tech selloff and AI arms race.

Wynn-Williams remarked that Meta pitched their entry into China as a way to “help China increase global influence and promote the China Dream,” as per internal documents.

“Meta does not dispute these facts,” Wynn-Williams said. “They can’t. I have the documents.” 

In a book

Her testimony is the latest chapter in a growing controversy that began earlier this year when Meta successfully blocked the publication of her New York Times best-seller memoir, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, now ranked third on Amazon’s Most Read Nonfiction list.

The book, which peeks into Meta’s internal culture and its alleged cooperation with China’s censorship regime, had garnered early praise and was available for pre-order until Meta intervened in arbitration proceedings and secured a gag order against its release.

The former executive alleged that Meta developed custom censorship tools for the CCP 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. 

Senator Josh Hawley, chairing the subcommittee, has been vocal about the need to investigate Wynn-Williams’ claims, saying that her testimony could reveal whether Meta executives misled Congress about the company’s dealings with China. 

Spokesperson Andy Stone described her testimony as “divorced from reality and riddled with false claims,” in an emailed statement. 

Stone claimed that while the company explored offering services in China over a decade ago, it does not operate there today, which Wynn-Williams says is “another lie.”

The former Meta executive’s claims emerge amid rising tensions between the U.S. and China over technology and trade. 

On April 2, former President Donald Trump announced a 25% tariff on all foreign-made automobiles, a 10% baseline tariff on all imports, and “reciprocal tariffs” targeting countries with high trade barriers against U.S. goods. 

Days later, the administration escalated the trade dispute by imposing a 104% tariff on Chinese exports, following China’s move to slap a 34% tariff on American products.w

China has vowed to “fight till the end,” the country’s embassy in the U.S. posted on X, labeling the U.S. action as blackmail and refusing to back down.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair