The AI Report
Posts
Whistleblower reveals Meta’s secret China plans

Whistleblower reveals Meta’s secret China plans

💥 Ex-OpenAI Murati recruits more OpenAI talent

Amanda Greenwood, Martin Crowley & Liam Lawson
April 09, 2025

WORK WITH US • COMMUNITY • PODCASTS • SIGN UP

Wednesday’s AI Report

• 1. 👀 Whistleblower reveals Meta’s secret China plans
• 2. 💼 Become an AI consultant with Innovating with AI
• 3. 💥 Ex-OpenAI Murati recruits more OpenAI talent
• 4. 🏭 Trump orders coal comeback for AI
• 5. 🤖 Find out what AI can do for your business with Upscaile
• 6. ⚙️ Trending AI Tools
• 7. 🏗️ Practical AI Applications
• 8. 📑 Recommended Resources

Read Time: 5 minutes

✅ Refer your friends and unlock rewards. Scroll to the bottom to find out more!

Whistleblower reveals Meta’s secret China plans

🚨 Our Report

Meta’s former Director of Global Public Policy, Sarah Wynn-Williams, will testify before Congress, accusing Meta of undermining US security by collaborating with China to help them advance in the AI arms race, alleging that it started briefing the ruling Communist Party on emerging technologies (like AI) in 2015, with the explicit goal of helping China “outcompete American companies.”

🔓 Key Points

Wynn-Williams will tell Congress that over the seven years she worked for Meta, she witnessed “executives lie about what they were doing with the Chinese Communist Party to employees, shareholders, and the public.”
She revealed that Meta had a secret mission to “get into China”—called Project Aldrin—and believes there’s a “straight line” between Meta’s China briefings and China’s current use of AI tools to build its military capabilities.
Facebook is banned in China, but she also plans to show corporate filings that expose the revenue Meta gets from Chinese advertisers to argue that Meta “did these things in secret to build an $18B ad business in China."

🔐 Relevance

Although her strong allegations are likely to trigger an ongoing investigation, Meta has slammed Wynn-Williams’ planned testimony, calling it “divorced from reality and riddled with falsities,” claiming it’s being “pushed by an employee who was terminated 8 years ago for poor performance" (although Wynn-Williams says she was fired for reporting harassment), and stands firm that Meta has always been very public about its interest in China, but “the fact is this: we do not currently operate our services in China.”

Want to build a 6-figure business as an AI consultant?

The AI consulting market is about to grow by a factor of 8X – from $6.9B to $54.7B in 2032.

But how does an AI enthusiast become an AI consultant?

How well you answer that question makes the difference between just “having AI ideas” and being handsomely compensated for your contribution to an organization’s AI transformation.

Thankfully, you don’t have to go it alone – our friends at Innovating with AI have welcomed 300 new students into The AI Consultancy Project, their new program that trains you to build a business as an AI consultant.

Some of the highlights current students are excited about:

The tools and frameworks to find clients and deliver top-notch services
A 6-month plan to build a 6-figure AI consulting business
Students getting their first AI client in as little as 3 days

And as a reader of The AI Report, you get early access to the next enrollment cycle.

🚨 Our Report

Former OpenAI CTO, Mira Murati, and her start-up Thinking Machines Labs (which emerged from stealth in February) have quietly acquired another two notable ex-OpenAI figures as advisors: Bob McGrew and Alec Radford.

🔓 Key Points

McGrew was at OpenAI for seven years, starting out as a member of the technical team before ending his time there as Chief Research Officer, after he quit—one day after Murati—in 2024 to “take a break.”
Radford who also quit OpenAI late last year (to “pursue independent research”), led the research behind key innovations like GPT (the model powering ChatGPT), speech recognition model Whisper, and DALL-E.
This comes as Murati recently announced that the start-up’s goals were to raise $1B at a $9B valuation to “advance AI by making it broadly useful and understandable through practical applications.”

🔐 Relevance

Murati—who largely led the work behind ChatGPT and DALL-E—quit OpenAI after six years and, as the founder and CEO of Thinking Machines Lab, has seemingly made it her mission to recruit top talent from OpenAI—with around half of her staff of 38 having previously worked there—including OpenAI co-founder John Schulman (who is her Chief Scientist) and ChatGPT co-creator, Barret Zoph (whois her Chief Technology Officer), which will undoubtedly help her reach her funding goal.

President Trump will sign an Executive Order (EO) to instruct federal governments to keep coal-fired power plants (which were facing closure) generating electricity to help power energy-hungry data centers.
Coal is now considered a critical mineral and Trump made it clear that although the US is “way ahead right now in the AI race with China,” coal-fired power is a top priority to help the US dominate the AI industry.
However, this could cause a backlash, as coal creates severe environmental and health problems, and coal-fired plants are slower and more expensive to run than renewable energy alternatives.

Find Out What AI & Automation Can Do for Your Business.

Your time is too valuable to be spent on inefficiencies.

What if AI and automation could unlock huge time and cost savings, allowing your team to focus on strategic growth?

In just 3-5 weeks, Upscaile’s AI Audit provides you with:

Actionable workflow improvements, powered by AI and automation
An AI roadmap to identify and prioritize high-value efficiency opportunities
An ROI analysis to forecast cost savings and productivity gains

Our AI audits have identified opportunities that have helped over 100 enterprises save 80,000+ hours of manual work, without the need to hire additional staff.

Curious about the reports we’ve made for others and if your business qualifies too?

Prompt Inspiration

After typing this prompt, you will understand how to leverage statistics and data analysis for real-world applications.

Guide me through the basics of statistics and data analysis for real-world applications

P.S. Use the Prompt Engineer GPT by The AI Report to 10x your prompts.

STARTUPS

Name: Podium
Value: $3B
Funding raised: $201M (Series D)

Podium is an all-in-one AI-powered lead management and communication platform with an AI employee who responds to leads instantly—increasing lead conversion rates and revenue—and is used by more than 100,000 businesses to acquire and convert new customers.

PODCASTS

GenAI efficiencies in manufacturing, smart farming, and beyond

In this podcast, Steffen Hoffmann (Managing Director of Bosch UK) discusses how AI can be leveraged across industries—from precision agriculture to HR automation—revealing insights into how Bosch is using AI-powered inspection systems to identify defects, which is optimizing production efficiency.