What's a Honey Trap? The spy tactic that helped topple Jensen Huang

One of the world's oldest spy tactics appears to have helped topple one of the world's richest men. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned Thursday amid revelations that he had an affair with a female client that U.S. intelligence identified as a Chinese spy, according to the New York Times.

NPR has not independently confirmed the reporting by the Times, which said Huang also had an unrelated affair with a company executive who reported to him. The Chinese government has called the accusation of spying, "nothing but smears against China."

Using a romantic relationship to gather intelligence from foreigners – known as a honey trap – has a long history in China and beyond. The Chinese Ministry of State Security, the country's main civilian intelligence agency, routinely tries to recruit women and occasionally men for honey traps, according to former CIA officers and other U.S. officials familiar with Chinese spy craft.

Some target businessmen for industrial espionage or to gain insights into the economic and political strategy of foreign governments. Peter Mattis, a former CIA counter-intelligence analyst, said honey traps also serve as influence operations with spies trying to gain enough trust to shape the target's thinking about China.

'A whole of society approach'

"The biggest thing here that we should pay attention to is that the Ministry of State Security celebrates a tradition of getting inside the enemy's decision-making," said Mattis, president of the Jamestown Foundation, a national security think tank in Washington, D.C., that focuses on America's geopolitical rivals.

Nicholas Eftimiades, who spent more than 34 years with the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency and now teaches at Penn State, said the honey trap is just one tactic among many that use ordinary Chinese citizens to gather information at home and abroad.

"Unlike the CIA, or MI6 or any of the other Western services, China has a 'whole of society approach,'" said Eftimiades, the author of Chinese Intelligence Operations: An Analysis of the People's Republic of China's Intelligence Services. "Chinese law supports this. The National Intelligence Law of 2017 requires citizens to cooperate with intelligence collection efforts."

A long list of honey traps

The Chinese government has employed honey traps in the United States and elsewhere in the West. In the 2010s, Christine Fang worked as a political fundraiser in California where she developed a physical relationship with Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell before and after he became a congressman.

The FBI warned Swalwell they thought Fang was a spy. He denied doing anything wrong and she fled back to China.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the FBI paid Katrina Leung – a Los Angeles businesswoman – $1.7 million over 18 years to spy on China. However, Leung had affairs with two FBI agents and the bureau later determined she was a double-agent.

The most remarkable honey trap case dates to the 1960s, when a young French diplomat began a nearly two-decade affair with a male Peking opera performer, whom he thought was a woman. The story inspired the play and movie, M Butterfly.

The woman implicated in the Nvidia case, Alice Huang, is a Chinese businesswoman whose company, Megaspeed, was a major buyer of advanced chips from Nvidia. The Times reported the U.S. had her under surveillance and learned of her connections to Chinese state security through her communications.

Desmond Shum, a Hong Kong businessman and former China insider, says Alice Huang doesn't fit the usual profile in these cases. She appears to be what the Chinese call a "white glove" – or front-person for multi-billion-dollar commercial deals, which Shum says could have insulated her from the Ministry of State Security.

Shum doesn't think Alice Huang is a professional spy, pointing out that she hasn't been discreet on social media, posting photos from her visits to luxurious country clubs and fancy foreign destinations.

"A spy wouldn't do that," Shum told NPR from his home in the United Kingdom.

Isaac Stone Fish, a former reporter in China who runs Strategy Risks, a China-focused business intelligence firm, says the Ministry of State Security – or MSS – could have approached Alice Huang after it learned of her affair with the Nvidia head.

"One imagines that every time a Chinese person enters into a romantic relationship with a very, very powerful American, MSS notices that," Stone Fish said.

The stuff of spy novels and movies

Honey traps are a staple of spy novel and movie plots, including the Netflix series, Black Doves, The Americans on FX, Apple TV's Slow Horses as well as James Bond films, such as From Russia with Love.

In reality, when Chinese state security approaches women for these operations, it's embarrassing and humiliating. The tactic perpetuates racist, sexist stereotypes while casting suspicion on the vast majority of Chinese people, who have nothing to do with intelligence gathering.

In addition to China, many intelligence services have engaged in honey traps. The Russians historically used sex workers for blackmail and leverage. During the Cold-War, East Germany sent well-educated and well-mannered male spies – known as Romeos – to West Germany.

Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, used honey traps from the 1950s into the 1970s in countries such as Egypt, Iraq and Iran. But investigative reporter Yossi Melman, who's written many books on Israeli intelligence, says the practice has dwindled as cyber spying and digital traps have proven more efficient.

The U.S. used sexual entrapment against the Soviets, but several former officials said the Americans now prefer to appeal to people on ideological grounds and provide financial carrots, such as money for college tuition or health care for a sick family member.

Even though countries repeatedly warn businessmen and government officials about the tell-tale signs of a honey trap, ego and vanity remain human weaknesses and men continue to succumb, said Eftimiades.

"Welcome to the male of the species," he said. "Is everyone aware of this? Yes. Does everyone think it'll happen to them? No. And, you know, and it happens all the time."