An ex-Meta executive, specifically Facebook’s former director of global public policy, Sarah Wynn-Williams, has revealed to a Senate committee that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was willing to give up Meta-collected American user data to China to get his popular social media network into the country.
The Chinese government maintains strict control over the internet in the country, banning outside networks like Facebook, Meta, WhatsApp, YouTube, and even Google. Meta owns the first three of the aforementioned services, and according to Wynn-Williams, Zuckerberg was willing to do almost anything to get past the Great Chinese Firewall.
These remarks come from a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism held on April 9, 2025. She revealed that Facebook’s secret mission to get into China was called “Project Aldrin” and was restricted to critical staff members. Meta even built a “physical pipeline connecting the United States and China,” per her written testimony.
Meta’s internal documents describe their sales pitch for why China should allow them in the market by quote “help[ing] China increase global influence and promote the China Dream.”
In addition to providing the Chinese Communist Party with access to American User data, Meta has also allegedly been lying about operating services in the country. Wynn-Williams claims that Meta began offering products and services in China as early as 2014 and still operates there.
According to Meta’s 2024 SEC filings, China is now the company’s second-biggest market. The company’s flagship AI model, Llama, has also “contributed significantly to Chinese advances in AI technologies like DeepSeek.” She also suggests that China is developing AI models for military use, relying on Meta’s Llama model.
As expected, Meta criticised her testimony, claiming it’s “divorced from reality and riddled with false claims.” Meta spokesperson Ryan Daniels confirmed to The Register that Zuckerberg has been public about Meta’s interest in offering services in China, with details that have been widely reported for a decade. Daniels also confirmed that the company does not operate its services in China today.
That said, Meta’s attempts to silence Wynn-Williams and its own SEC filings at the end of January 2025 for the 2024 financial year reveal that most of the company’s revenue came from Western Europe, China, Brazil, Australia, India, and Canada.
Meta may not be operating its widely known social media services in the country, but it’s certainly making money from the Chinese. Wynn-Williams claims that the only reason “China does not currently have access to US user data through this pipeline is because Congress stepped in.”
“This pipeline” is a reference to an underwater cable Meta wanted to run between Los Angeles and Hong Kong. However, after pressure from US national security agencies, the cable was rerouted to Taiwan and the Philippines instead.
Meanwhile, despite its public commitment to waive rights to pursue forced arbitration in 2018, Meta has sued Wynn-Williams for “hundreds of millions of dollars.” The company also has a legal gag order that prohibits her from speaking with members of Congress, all sought by a company whose CEO claims to be a “champion of free speech.”
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