AI, superchips and cyber warfare may be reshaping modern espionage, but some secrets are still won the old-fashioned way: through sex and scandal.

The latest controversy to ripple through the tech world centres on Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and his affair with a woman accused by Washington of working for Chinese intelligence, a claim Beijing denies.

The episode has thrust the “honey trap” back into the spotlight, reviving interest in an age-old spying tactic that turns attraction and intimacy into tools for stealing state secrets and influencing those in power.

Seduction and blackmail

History is packed with powerful politicians and insiders who found themselves ensnared by men and women tasked with winning their trust before extracting intelligence or gaining leverage.

One of the most famous femme fatales in spy lore is Mata Hari, the Dutch exotic dancer executed in 1917 after being accused of spying for Germany during World War I.

The Cold War also produced a long list of similarly colourful cases.

In France, ambassador Maurice Dejean was recalled from Moscow in 1964 after an extramarital affair, said Clement Renault, a researcher at France’s Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM).

The scandal created one of former president Charles de Gaulle’s most memorable put-downs: “Alors Dejean, on couche?” (“So, Dejean, sleeping around?”).

Another famous case, Renault said, involved the Soviet KGB blackmailing British embassy employee John Vassall with “intimate photos revealing his homosexuality, taken in Moscow”.

In the 1980s, Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed details of Israel’s secret nuclear programme, was lured into the hands of his kidnappers by a woman known as “Cindy”.

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 ran for years.

In the 1960s, Chinese opera singer Shi Pei Pu, secretly working for Chinese intelligence, began a two-decade affair with French diplomat Bernard Boursicot, who handed over sensitive information.

Not so glamorous

The honey trap can take many forms.

Some seducers are trained professionals, like East Germany’s famed “Romeo Spies” whose mission was to romance lonely West German women and gain 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 something out of a Hollywood film.

Intelligence services have also used sex workers, business executives and well-connected individuals who already move in the target’s world.

That is what makes the Nvidia allegations so intriguing.

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 recalled being contacted by a woman from South America who claimed 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 deploys 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 espionage 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”.