Former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, accusing the social media company of undermining national security and briefing China on US artificial intelligence efforts to grow its business there.
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“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,” Wynn-Williams said in her prepared testimony.
Her book Careless People, an explosive insider account of her time at the social media giant, sold 60,000 copies in its first week and reached the top 10 on Amazon’s bestseller list amid efforts by Meta to discredit the work and stop her from talking about her experiences at the company.
Meta used a “campaign of threats and intimidation” to silence the former executive, said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, during the hearing.
Wynn-Williams served as director of global public policy at Facebook, now Meta, from 2011 until she was fired in 2017.
“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 favour with Beijing and build an US$18 billion dollar business in China,” she said in her prepared remarks.