AI changes the tools. The honey trap hasn’t changed. Artificial intelligence and cyber warfare may be reshaping spycraft, but an old tactic is back in focus: turning attraction into a way to reach state secrets.
Artificial intelligence, superchips and cyber warfare may be reshaping modern espionage, but some secrets are still won the old-fashioned way. The latest controversy centers on Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and his affair with a woman accused by Washington of working for Chinese intelligence, a claim Beijing denies. It has put the “honey trap” back in the spotlight: a tactic that turns attraction and intimacy into tools for stealing secrets and influencing the powerful.
Mata Hari, the Dutch exotic dancer executed in 1917 after being accused of spying for Germany, is among the most famous cases. The Cold War added many more. French ambassador Maurice Dejean was recalled from Moscow in 1964 after an extramarital affair, said Clément Renault, a researcher at France’s Institute for Strategic Research. De Gaulle’s put-down became legend: “Alors, Dejean, on couche?” (“So, Dejean, sleeping around?”).
Renault also cited the KGB’s blackmail of British embassy employee John Vassall with “intimate photos revealing his homosexuality, taken in Moscow”. In the 1980s, Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was lured by a woman known as “Cindy”, who “persuaded him to join her in Rome, where he was abducted by the Mossad and taken back to Israel”.
“Potentially, all intelligence services can resort to ‘compromise’ operations and similar methods”. — Clément Renault, researcher, France’s Institute for Strategic Research
Honey traps take many forms. East Germany’s “Romeo Spies” romanced lonely West German women to reach important information. Services have also used sex workers, business executives and well-connected people already in the target’s world.
That is what makes the Nvidia allegations intriguing, Renault said. Alice Huang “held a senior role at Megaspeed, a Singaporean firm specializing in AI computing infrastructure” that did business with Nvidia. “She was allegedly recruited by (China’s) state security ministry as an agent, perfectly placed to make contact (with Jensen Huang)”, he said. A key figure in the “AI war”, he added, “could be caught in a relatively classic operation”.
Who uses honey traps? Almost everyone, according to Renault. But the missions demand “an extremely high level of personal and physical commitment from agents”. Authoritarian governments, “which can exert greater pressure on their citizens or are driven by strong ideologies”, may be better placed to ask for it, he argued.
France’s domestic service has released a YouTube video titled “Trapped by a foreign intelligence agency. It’s never too late to get help”. British authorities offer simpler advice: if someone’s interest in you seems unusually intense or “too good to be true”, then “you should be cautious”.
- Source: AFP
