The Cold War may have ended decades ago, but male British diplomats posted to Moscow are still introduced to one of the profession’s more uncomfortable realities before they have settled into their offices.
During a routine security briefing, an embassy officer reportedly advises middle-aged men to check the so-called “ugly mirror” each morning. The exercise is intended to remind them that if a beautiful young Russian woman suddenly appears captivated by them, their appearance is unlikely to be the reason.
One can only wonder whether 63-year-old Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has ever felt the need for such a reminder. In Taiwan, the billionaire is celebrated like a rock star, often seen in $9,000 Tom Ford leather biker jackets and carrying himself with the confidence of a man accustomed to attention.
Had he looked more closely in that metaphorical mirror, the man married to Lori Huang since 1985 might have been less vulnerable to the alleged attentions of suspected Chinese spy Alice Huang. He might also have avoided the fate of influential older men who, for centuries, have been ensnared by one of espionage’s oldest tactics: the honey trap.
The method exploits what intelligence agencies regard as a familiar vulnerability: the attraction some older men feel toward much younger women. From the biblical story of Delilah extracting Samson’s secret — his long hair — for her Philistine sponsors, seductive operatives have been used to obtain information and influence powerful targets.
For decades, the Soviet Union and later communist China relied heavily on honeytrapping, also known as honeypotting or “sex warfare,” to offset the West’s advantages in more conventional forms of espionage. Experts say the tactic can be highly effective because it preys on loneliness and unfulfilled sexual desire, particularly among targets living abroad, far from home and with limited opportunities to socialize with locals.
The United States’ principal rivals continue to regard the tactic as valuable. Many potential targets are technology specialists, including Huang, who has said that working as a waiter at Denny’s when he was young helped him overcome severe shyness. Such men may, intelligence officials believe, find romantic relationships especially difficult to navigate.
Only last month, artificial intelligence company OpenAI reportedly warned its engineers about the threat posed by honey traps. The briefing is said to have cited a case in which foreign spies tried to seduce a US diplomat in Russia, first sending a blonde woman to his hotel room with champagne.
The circumstances of Alice Huang’s first meeting with Jensen Huang remain unclear
Lori Huang and Jensen Huang married in 1985, eight years before Jensen co-founded Nvidia
When he rejected the approach, the agency reportedly sent a red-haired woman — followed by a young man.
Hollywood has turned honey-trap spies into a recurring source of glamorous entertainment, from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest and countless James Bond films to more recent television series including The Americans and Ponies.
Behind the cinematic glamour, however, intelligence specialists say the threat remains serious. China increasingly regards US leadership in advanced technologies, including semiconductors and artificial intelligence, as a strategic vulnerability that can be targeted through HUMINT — human intelligence.
That can involve attractive young women working as professional agents for China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s equivalent of the CIA. It may also involve Chinese citizens pressured into flirting with, sleeping with or otherwise cultivating foreign targets on behalf of the state, according to observers of Beijing.
China has traditionally focused much of its espionage effort on economic targets rather than military or political secrets. Experts say businessmen and industrialists are often “soft targets”: unlike government or military personnel, they may lack specialist training and dedicated security protection.
In the case of Alice Huang, who is described as a senior executive at a Singapore technology company, the cover may have been particularly useful. Agents are often presented as businesswomen, academics or investors, giving them a credible and relatively discreet way to make contact. Bars are a familiar meeting place, but espionage analysts say they can also be too obvious, prompting potential victims to remain cautious.
Hacking can steal valuable information, but an intimate relationship may offer something even more useful: direct influence over the target. It can provide access to data while also shaping decisions, loyalties and political judgments.
Some intelligence specialists believe Huang’s value to Beijing may have rested less on Nvidia’s technical secrets than on his role as a close friend and adviser to Donald Trump while the former president developed policies on China and artificial intelligence.
Nvidia chief Jensen Huang is alleged to have been drawn into a relationship with suspected Chinese spy Alice Huang, reviving concerns about the centuries-old honey-trap tactic
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the CEO was alleged to have had a second affair with a company executive who reports to him
Huang has apologized for being “unfaithful” to his wife, while Nvidia’s board has begun an independent investigation into the allegations.
“I support the investigation and will cooperate fully,” he wrote in an internal memo on Sunday, November 8. “I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America’s national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American.”
The pressure intensified on Wednesday, when the New York Times reported allegations of a second extramarital affair involving an Nvidia executive who reports to Huang.
Nvidia shares fell sharply in after-hours trading following the report. Speculation has since emerged that the board is preparing to remove Huang from his position. Such a move, some observers fear, could burst the artificial-intelligence bubble and send shock waves through the global economy.
The allegations are likely to put technology executives and engineers across Silicon Valley on heightened alert about relationships both inside and outside the workplace. US intelligence agencies have warned for years that growing technology and trade tensions with China have encouraged Beijing to exploit vulnerabilities among Western men.
Cases involving Western diplomats are typically kept secret. Targets are often quietly recalled and the incident buried. US intelligence sources, however, say two cases involving Western officials in China have become public.
The threat is considered especially difficult in China because the country’s security services do not rely solely on trained spies. They also pressure ordinary citizens into supplying information through intimidation or threats. As a result, any Chinese partner of an American expatriate could potentially be coerced into cooperation.
Alice Huang is described as a senior executive at a Singapore technology company
Experts say targeting lonely or sexually frustrated people living far from home can be an effective intelligence strategy
The perceived danger was underscored last year when it emerged that, despite Donald Trump’s warm public comments about Chinese President Xi Jinping, his administration had retained a ban introduced during the Biden era. The rules prohibited US government personnel in China from engaging in romantic or sexual relationships with local people.
US officials have long been required to report romantic relationships with foreign nationals. China, wary of exposing its own methods, goes further by barring its government employees from such relationships — unless, of course, they are operating as spies.
Like Britain’s “ugly mirror” warning, US diplomats bound for China receive briefings about cases in which attractive women were sent to target colleagues. They are also told that dozens of Chinese security agents may be assigned to monitor a single foreign diplomat and identify weaknesses that could later be exploited.
The Biden-era prohibition had a clear Cold War precedent. Honey traps flourished during that period, when agents from both sides were able to operate inside hostile countries.
In 1987, the US government prohibited personnel stationed in the Soviet bloc and China from befriending, dating or having sex with local people after a US Marine in Moscow was seduced by a Soviet spy. Clayton Lonetree was approached by Violetta Seina, an employee at the Soviet embassy, and later handed over to a KGB handler. He was convicted of espionage and sentenced to nine years in prison.
The restrictions were eased only after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
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For years afterward, US personnel in China were required to report intimate contact with Chinese citizens to their superiors, but romantic and sexual relationships were not explicitly banned.
According to an Associated Press report, pre-deployment briefings now include case studies in which Chinese intelligence services sent attractive women to approach American diplomats. Personnel are warned that dozens of state security agents can be assigned to watch a single diplomat and search for exploitable vulnerabilities.
China and Russia are not the only countries with a history of honey traps. The Dutch dancer Mata Hari was executed by France in 1917 for allegedly spying for Germany during World War One, although historians continue to debate the extent of her actual espionage work.
During World War Two, British author Roald Dahl effectively served as a “Romeo spy” for British intelligence. The former RAF pilot used his charm, wit and good looks in Washington to seduce wealthy and well-connected American women, gather information and cultivate influence in support of US involvement in the war on Britain’s side.
The Soviets, however, turned the honey trap into a central component of their intelligence system. The NKVD and its successor, the KGB, trained female operatives known as “swallows” and male seducers called “ravens.” Defectors even described a so-called “sparrow school” devoted to teaching the craft.
The classic Soviet operation was often less about quietly extracting secrets during pillow talk than about seduction followed by surveillance, recording and blackmail.
The tactic was particularly effective in the tightly controlled Soviet bloc, where foreign targets lived in closed and heavily monitored communities. Recording a diplomat or official in a compromising situation was comparatively straightforward.
Despite Trump’s warm words about Xi Jinping, his administration retained a Biden-era ban on romantic and sexual relationships between US government staff in China and local people
The Dutch dancer Mata Hari was executed in 1917 after being accused by France of spying for Germany during World War One
Some targets were gay men, who faced particular danger at a time when exposure could destroy a career. British embassy employee John Vassall was targeted by the KGB in Moscow after being lured to a party where compromising photographs were taken. He was then “persuaded” to pass British naval secrets for roughly seven years before his arrest in 1962 and subsequent imprisonment.
Other operations were more elaborate. In the late 1950s, a KGB “swallow” seduced Maurice Dejean, France’s ambassador in Moscow. The operation was followed by an additional humiliation: another agent, posing as a jealous husband, attacked him.
East Germany’s Stasi was particularly effective at deploying male agents. Its operatives were sent into Bonn, then West Germany’s capital, to seduce lonely female secretaries working in government ministries.
In 1967, Leonore Sutterlin, a secretary to the foreign minister, took her own life after discovering that the man she had married was a Stasi agent who had wed her to gain access to confidential documents.
Russia continued to use honey traps after the Soviet Union’s collapse, but changing social attitudes forced it to adapt. As homosexuality was decriminalized in Western countries and became less stigmatized, the threat of exposure became a less reliable tool of blackmail.
Chinese intelligence agencies have generally taken a different approach. Rather than immediately threatening targets with compromising material, they have tended to cultivate lengthy relationships in which the target gradually becomes emotionally, financially or professionally dependent on the operative.
Perhaps the best-known Chinese honey-trap case involved Shi Pei Pu and Bernard Boursicot. Shi, a Peking Opera singer, maintained a two-decade relationship with Boursicot, an employee at the French embassy in Beijing, from the 1960s into the 1980s while convincing him that Shi was a woman.
The couple’s sexual relationship took place in darkness. Shi told Boursicot that he had been forced to live as a man to satisfy his father’s demand for a son. Chinese authorities used the extraordinary relationship — later adapted into the play M. Butterfly — to pressure Boursicot into handing over hundreds of confidential French documents.
Experts say post-Soviet Russia has often focused on obtaining “kompromat,” or compromising material, while China’s strategy is typically slower and less openly coercive. It may take months or even years before a relationship produces an intelligence payoff.
For Beijing, patience is central to the method. Christine Fang, also known as “Fang Fang,” was suspected of being a Chinese intelligence operative who fled the United States in 2015 after posing as a political volunteer. Intelligence specialists said she spent years cultivating relationships with California politicians in the early and mid-2010s. FBI documents linked her to former US Congressman Eric Swalwell.
Swalwell acknowledged having “physical relations with Fang on a handful of occasions,” but said he never dated her or had a romantic relationship with her. The FBI found no evidence of a quid pro quo.
Fang’s apparent strategy was long-term. She focused on politicians early in their careers, volunteering on campaigns or helping with fundraising in the hope that they would eventually gain power. The FBI said she was believed to be working for China’s Ministry of State Security.
One of the most notorious Chinese honey-trap cases involved Bernard Boursicot, an employee at the French embassy in Beijing
Peking Opera singer Shi Pei Pu maintained a 20-year affair with Boursicot while convincing him that Shi was a woman
FBI documents said former US Congressman Eric Swalwell was targeted by suspected Chinese intelligence agent Christine Fang, also known as “Fang Fang”
Chinese and Russian intelligence services still use honey traps, but the modern version often begins online. Agencies are believed to flood social media with fake profiles on an industrial scale, sometimes using dating platforms to identify potential targets.
LinkedIn can be especially useful because it allows operatives to identify people in sensitive jobs within seconds. Initial contact may appear entirely innocent and professional.
Western intelligence agencies say warning signs include an unusually attractive or attentive woman who quickly expresses interest in a target, particularly when that interest extends to his work, employer or colleagues.
Other red flags include pressure to meet in person, an unusually rapid escalation of the relationship or requests for secrecy. Gifts and favors may be offered to create a sense of obligation.
The new acquaintance may also encourage the target to drink heavily or bend workplace rules. Such behavior can make people less cautious and more likely to disclose confidential information.
Business targets may be invited to China for conferences, trade delegations or ostensibly friendly visits. Once there, they can be treated as VIP guests, surrounded by banquets, karaoke and constant personal attention.
Britain’s MI5 addressed the threat to government and military personnel, as well as employees in strategically important industries, through its “Think Before You Link” campaign earlier this year. The agency has previously warned British businesspeople against meeting contacts in Chinese hotel rooms or accepting gifts.
As the relationship deepens, the target may not realize that he is being drawn into espionage. The operative can ask apparently harmless questions, presenting them as ordinary curiosity or friendly interest in his work.
Over time, the questions may become more specific and compromising. By then, the target may be emotionally invested and increasingly reluctant to refuse. Experts say Chinese intelligence agencies keep blackmail as a fallback option if persuasion and dependence fail.
It remains unknown how Alice Huang first met Jensen Huang. What he has learned, however, is that her interest may not have been sparked by the cool, confident persona that has made him a technology celebrity.
- Nvidia shares fell by about 8 per cent in after-hours trading on Wednesday, while the company lost roughly $600 billion in stock-market value during the week.
