Jensen Huang Resigns: A Short History of the Honey Trap
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has resigned amid reports he had an affair with a woman US intelligence identified as a Chinese spy. Beijing calls it smears. A short history of the honey trap shows why spy agencies keep using romance.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned amid reports that he had an affair with a female client whom US intelligence identified as a Chinese spy. The case has put a short history of the honey trap, the use of romance to extract secrets, back in the headlines.
The affair claim comes from a New York Times report that NPR said it has not independently confirmed. The report also said Huang had a separate, unrelated affair with a company executive who reported to him.
The Chinese government rejected the spying accusation as "nothing but smears against China."
The woman at the center
The woman is Alice Huang, a Chinese businesswoman whose company, Megaspeed, was a major buyer of advanced chips from Nvidia. The Times reported that US authorities had her under surveillance and learned of her ties to Chinese state security through her communications.
A tactic with deep roots
Mata Hari, a Dutch exotic dancer convicted of spying for Germany in the First World War, is the best-known name. During the Cold War, East German spymaster Markus Wolf used male "Romeos" to entrap West German secretaries. According to the CIA, 40 women were prosecuted in West Germany for espionage in that period.
The Soviet KGB recruited John Vassall, an employee at the British embassy in Moscow, in the 1950s. It photographed him in compromising circumstances with men and threatened him with exposure. He passed a great many documents to the KGB.
In the 1980s, US Marine Security Guard Clayton Lonetree fell for a KGB honey trap at the embassy in Moscow and passed on sensitive information.
Culture changes the odds. In a French documentary, an intelligence officer known as Nicolas says extramarital affairs are so common in France that they give a hostile service little if any leverage.
China's version
Former CIA officers and other US officials familiar with Chinese spy craft say the Ministry of State Security routinely tries to recruit women, and occasionally men, for honey traps. Some targets are businessmen, for industrial espionage or insight into foreign economic and political strategy.
Peter Mattis, a former CIA counter-intelligence analyst who is president of the Jamestown Foundation, said the ministry "celebrates a tradition of getting inside the enemy's decision-making." Honey traps can also work as influence operations, he said, aimed at shaping how a target thinks about China.
Nicholas Eftimiades, who spent more than 34 years with the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency and now teaches at Penn State, said China has a "whole of society approach." He pointed to the National Intelligence Law of 2017, which requires citizens to cooperate with intelligence collection.
Cases in the United States
In the 2010s, Christine Fang worked as a political fundraiser in California and developed a physical relationship with Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell. The FBI warned him it believed she was a spy. He denied doing anything wrong, and she fled back to China.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the FBI paid Los Angeles businesswoman Katrina Leung $1.7 million over 18 years to spy on China. She had affairs with two FBI agents, and the bureau later determined she was a double agent.
A former US intelligence officer, writing about the tactic, said American services reportedly avoid it. Blackmail does not make for productive long-term agents, many former case officers say. They prefer recruits who cooperate for money or conviction.
