This is a developing story on what could be described as a substantial revelation concerning one of America’s most infamously harmful technology companies.
A Meta whistleblower is appearing before Congress today with testimony that may shed new light on Facebook’s aggressive stance toward its competitor TikTok.
According to prepared remarks obtained by reporters, the whistleblower will allege that Meta’s campaign against TikTok was not primarily motivated to improve national security, but rather by Meta’s opposite desire to maintain market dominance for profit on undermining national security.
Throughout those seven years, I saw Meta executives repeatedly undermine U.S. national security and betray American values,” the prepared opening testimony of Wynn-Williams reads. “They did these things in secret to win favor with Beijing and build an $18 billion dollar business in China,” the former New Zealand diplomat will say. “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,” per the opening testimony. Wynn-Williams will say she’s appearing before the committee “to set the record straight about these illegal and dangerous activities,” per the prepared testimony.
The former employee is expected to reveal that Facebook’s punitive lobbying efforts to ban TikTok were related to what the whistleblower characterizes as “selling out American national security.”
The testimony suggests that if TikTok were indeed connected to China as alleged, it would have competed with Facebook’s own undisclosed business arrangements, potentially reducing Facebook’s profit from selling citizen data to foreign nations.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, who served as Director of Global Public Policy at Facebook/Meta for nearly seven years starting in 2011, details several explosive allegations in her full testimony.
She claims Meta operated its secret “Project Aldrin” to establish business in China while publicly denying operations there, created custom censorship tools for the Chinese government, deleted accounts of Chinese dissidents at Beijing’s request, and even built a physical pipeline connecting the US and China that could potentially expose private user data.
According to Wynn-Williams, Meta has built China into its second-largest market, generating $18 billion in business while sharing sensitive technological information, including AI developments through its Llama model that she claims have contributed to Chinese military AI advancements.
The whistleblower states she has filed complaints with the SEC and DOJ and claims Meta is attempting to silence her with legal action and a gag order despite previous commitments to waive rights to forced arbitration.