Yaita Akio’s Viewpoint” The most powerful honey trap: I let you speak for Beijing and you still think you are smart!

Today (11/12), Huida CEO Huang Renxun announced his resignation. The technology giant who led the global AI revolution sadly left the company he founded 33 years ago because of a scandal involving Chinese intelligence.

The world's most advanced AI chip can handle trillions of calculations, but it may not necessarily be able to calculate people's hearts. Huang Renxun's experience once again reminds people of the long-standing "honey trap" in Chinese history.

More than 2,000 years ago, King Gou Jian of Yue gave Xi Tzu to King Wu Fu Chai in order to take revenge. The hero Fu Cha was so sad that he lost his country in the end.

In "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", Wang Yun used Diao Chan to sow discord between Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu. As a result, one lost his life and the other got the bad reputation of killing his father.

In modern times, beauty traps have also kept pace with the times.

In the 1990s, Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto was revealed by the media to have a special relationship with a woman suspected of being involved in Chinese intelligence work. It is said that Hashimoto gave up his second visit to Yasukuni Shrine because of this incident. More than a decade ago, Wendi Deng, the ex-wife of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, was also rumored to have ties to the Chinese intelligence circle.

Not all of these rumors may be confirmed, but one thing is worth noting. Intelligence work does not necessarily involve stealing documents, planting bugs, or sneaking into an office in the middle of the night. A smarter approach is to make you willing to speak for the other person.

What is more concerning about the Jen-Hsun Huang incident than the relationship between men and women is whether the relevant people use personal relationships to influence Huida's stance on China's export of AI chips.

The most powerful honey trap is not to let you leak information, but to make you make important judgments that are beneficial to him, but also think that it is entirely your own idea. Moreover, people who fall into the trap often feel that they are very smart.

Thinking of this, I can't help but think of Taiwan.

In recent years, some media people and politicians in Taiwan originally had a very tough attitude towards China, but then they suddenly made a U-turn. Not only did they begin to speak for Beijing, they were even more active than Chinese state media.

AI can be continuously upgraded, but the weaknesses of human nature have not been updated for thousands of years. Chips must be protected against hackers, politicians and entrepreneurs, as well as honey traps from authoritarian countries.

(The author is a Japanese journalist and writer in Taiwan)

This article is reprinted with permission from Akio Yaita’s Facebook page