Honey Traps: sex, lies and a spy's oldest trick

AI, superchips and cyber warfare may be reshaping modern espionage, but some secrets are still won the old-fashioned way: through sex and scandal. Honey Traps: sex, lies and a spy's oldest trickThe latest controversy to ripple through the tech world centres on Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and his affair with a woman accused by Washington of working for Chinese intelligence, which Beijing denies.

The episode has thrust the "honey trap" back into the spotlight, reviving interest in an age-old spying tactic that turns attraction and intimacy into tools for stealing state secrets and influencing those in power. History is packed with powerful politicians and insiders who found themselves ensnared by men and women tasked with winning their trust before extracting intelligence or gaining leverage.

One of the most famous femme fatales in spy lore is Mata Hari, the Dutch exotic dancer executed in 1917 after being accused of spying for Germany during World War I. The Cold War also produced a long list of similarly colourful cases.

In France, ambassador Maurice Dejean was recalled from Moscow in 1964 after after an extramarital affair, said Clement Renault, a researcher at France's Institute for Strategic Research . The scandal created one of former president Charles de Gaulle's most memorable put-downs: "Alors Dejean, on couche?" .

Another famous case, Renault said, involved the Soviet KGB blackmailing British embassy employee John Vassal with "intimate photos revealing his homosexuality, taken in Moscow". In the 1980s, Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed details of Israel's secret nuclear programme, was lured into the hands of his kidnappers by a woman known as "Cindy".

She "persuaded him to join her in Rome, where he was abducted by the Mossad and taken back to Israel," Renault explained. In the 1960s, Chinese opera singer Shi Pei Pu, secretly working for Chinese intelligence, began a two-decade affair with French diplomat Bernard Boursicot, who handed over sensitive information.

Some seducers are trained professionals, like East Germany's famed "Romeo Spies" whose mission was to romance lonely West German women and gain access to important information. "With the shortage of eligible men another consequence of the war single West German women, eager for male companionship, became frequent targets for East German male spies," the CIA later said in a study.

Not every honey trap looks like something out of a Hollywood film. Intelligence services have also used sex workers, business executives and well-connected individuals who already move in the target's world. That is what makes the Nvidia allegations so intriguing.

Alice Huang, the woman involved in the affair, "held a senior role at Megaspeed, a Singaporean firm specialising in AI computing infrastructure" that did business with Nvidia, Renault said.