The history of ‘sexpionage’ after Nvidia CEO's affair with suspected Chinese spy
A large portion of intelligence work is focused on collecting information your competitor or adversary does not want you to have. But another key focus of intelligence is on compromising key individuals.
This involves damaging reputations or putting people in a position where they might disclose sensitive information. To achieve that, intelligence agencies have often used the suggestion, promise or reality of sex.
The reemergence of interest in “sexpionage” comes from recent allegations around Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and his relationship with an executive of a partner company. The US intelligence community believes the woman in question, Alice Huang, is connected to Chinese intelligence.
Nvidia, the computing power behind American AI advances and a significant financial factor in US stock market gains, has launched its own investigation. And the US president, Donald Trump, has said the FBI is looking into the situation.
China has dismissed the claims as a groundless smear campaign.
The situation has drawn attention to the wider vulnerabilities the west has to spying.
The key question is: does any western organisation with deep exposure to Chinese partners have a realistic understanding of how information moves out of those relationships?
My assessment is they do not. In part, this is because Chinese intelligence is widely viewed as a mirror of the west’s heavily controlled intelligence agencies.
But China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law requires organisations and citizens to support and cooperate with state intelligence work.
Any partner with meaningful ties to China is thus a potential conduit, regardless of whether they have been formally recruited.
Sexpionage captures headlines and drags eyeballs. The promise of a fallen man (nearly always a man) has been a staple of tabloid newspapers, novels, films and television for well over a century. Among the most prominent examples is the Profumo Scandal in the 1960s.
At that time, the then-UK secretary for war, John Profumo, had an affair with a 19-year-old woman, who was also intimate with a Soviet defence attache. This created an intelligence vulnerability.
Similarly, suggestions of government connections to the dead and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein provide whiffs of espionage to sexual abuse and compromise.
Sexpionage can even be seen in biblical accounts. The Book of Joshua tells the story of a woman called Rahab who used her access to Jericho’s military leaders to pass on secrets to the Israelites. It also featured in the intrigues of the middle ages and prominently in the first world war.
