World
India
A former Meta executive, Sarah Wynn-Williams, has stepped into the spotlight with startling accusations against her former employer. In her testimony before Congress, she alleged that Meta put profits over national interest by cooperating with China, endangering US national security in the process.
Whistleblower Accuses Meta of Prioritizing China Over US Interests
Wynn-Williams claims that top Meta leaders knowingly gave the Chinese Communist Party access to user data—some of it belonging to Americans. Her revelations came during a congressional hearing led by Senator Josh Hawley, head of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism.
“I saw Meta executives repeatedly undermine U.S. national security and betray American values,” she said during her opening remarks, as reported by CBS News.
She also testified that Meta developed specialized censorship tools specifically for the Chinese government, giving Beijing unprecedented control over the platform’s content moderation systems.
Senator Hawley began the hearing by accusing Meta of trying to suppress Wynn-Williams’ appearance, saying, “Meta had stopped at absolutely nothing to prevent Wednesday’s testimony by Ms Wynn-Williams.” He added, “Why is it that Facebook is so desperate to prevent this witness from telling what she knows?”
Wynn-Williams continued, “The greatest trick Mark Zuckerberg ever pulled was wrapping the American flag around himself and calling himself a patriot and saying he didn’t offer services in China, while he spent the last decade building an $18 billion business there.”
Meta Pushes Back, But Concerns Linger
Meta has firmly denied the allegations. The company stated that Wynn-Williams’ statements were “divorced from reality and riddled with false claims.”
A spokesperson for Meta, Ryan Daniels, acknowledged that Zuckerberg had shown public interest in doing business in China. Still, he emphasized, “[T]he fact is this: we do not operate our services in China today.”
Wynn-Williams insists that Meta’s cooperation went further than mere interest. She claims the company collaborated “hand in glove” with Chinese authorities to suppress dissent and silence critics of the Chinese Communist Party.
She also said Meta threatened her with a $50,000 penalty for violating her separation agreement by speaking out—regardless of the truth of her claims. Meta responded that this amount applies only to material violations of her agreement, not for participating in a congressional hearing.
AI, China, and Data Security: A Growing Concern
One of the most explosive parts of Wynn-Williams’ testimony involved Meta’s artificial intelligence model, Llama. She alleged that Meta’s tech was used by DeepSeek, a Chinese AI firm—raising questions about whether American-developed technology is indirectly aiding China’s AI ambitions.
In response, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone dismissed the importance of that connection. “The alleged role of a single and outdated version of an American open-source model is irrelevant when we know China is already investing over 1T to surpass the US technologically, and Chinese tech companies are releasing their own open AI models as fast, or faster, than US ones.”
These claims arrive at a time of heightened tension between the US and China, particularly over technology, data security, and economic rivalry.
The Trump administration had previously imposed steep tariffs on Chinese goods and pushed for the sale of TikTok to a US-based company. Meanwhile, the House has formed a Select Committee on Strategic Competition with China, underscoring the bipartisan effort to examine Beijing’s global ambitions—and the role of American companies in enabling them.
ALSO READ: India-US Relations: US Vice President JD Vance, NSA Michael Waltz Set For April 21 Visit
