AI, superchips and cyber warfare may be changing modern spying, but some secrets are still won the old-fashioned way: through sex and scandal.
The latest controversy in the tech world is about Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and his affair with a woman. Washington says she works for Chinese intelligence. Beijing denies this claim.
The episode has brought the "honey trap" back into the spotlight. This is an old spying trick that uses attraction and intimacy to steal state secrets and influence powerful people.
Seduction and blackmail
History is full of powerful politicians and insiders who were trapped by men and women sent to win their trust before taking intelligence or gaining power over them.
One of the most famous women in spy stories is Mata Hari. She was a Dutch exotic dancer. She was executed in 1917 after being accused of spying for Germany during World War I.
The Cold War also produced many similar cases.
In France, ambassador Maurice Dejean was called back from Moscow in 1964 after an affair outside marriage. This was said by Clement Renault, a researcher at France's Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM).
The scandal led to one of former president Charles de Gaulle's most memorable remarks: "Alors Dejean, on couche?" which means "So, Dejean, sleeping around?"
Another famous case, Renault said, involved the Soviet KGB blackmailing British embassy worker John Vassall. They used "intimate photos revealing his homosexuality, taken in Moscow".
In the 1980s, Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was tricked by a woman known as "Cindy". He had revealed details of Israel's secret nuclear programme.
She "persuaded him to join her in Rome, where he was abducted by the Mossad and taken back to Israel," Renault explained.
Other honey traps lasted for years.
In the 1960s, Chinese opera singer Shi Pei Pu, who was secretly working for Chinese intelligence, started a twenty-year affair with French diplomat Bernard Boursicot. Boursicot handed over sensitive information.
Not so glamorous
The honey trap can take many forms.
Some seducers are trained professionals, like East Germany's famous "Romeo Spies". Their mission was to romance lonely West German women and get access to important information.
"With the shortage of eligible men — another consequence of the war (WWII) — 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 a Hollywood film.
Intelligence services have also used sex workers, business executives and well-connected people who already move in the target's world.
That is what makes the Nvidia allegations so interesting.
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.
"She was allegedly recruited by (China's) state security ministry as an agent, perfectly placed to make contact (with Jensen Huang)," Renault said.
"What is interesting here is that a key figure in the 'AI war' could be caught in a relatively classic operation." Some cases are not so subtle.
A former member of a French security service remembered being contacted by a woman from South America. She said she was a journalist seeking an interview with a senior security official.
"I met her twice," he told AFP.
"Each time she was evasive about her work as a journalist and what the interview was actually about. But she kept telling me her marriage was unhappy and showing me photos of herself in lingerie."
Too good to be true
Who uses honey traps? According to Renault, the short answer is almost everyone.
"Potentially all intelligence services can resort to 'compromise' operations and similar methods," Renault said.
But not all states are equally equipped to run them.
"These missions require an extremely high level of personal and physical commitment from agents", Renault noted.
So authoritarian governments, he argued, "which can exert greater pressure on their citizens or are driven by strong ideologies", may be better positioned to ask agents to make such sacrifices.
Counter-intelligence agencies regularly warn officials that spying rarely begins with a dramatic exchange in a dark alley.
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: dawn