Alexandra Bidian in Rasinari, Romania11/12/2026November 12, 2026
Plans for a magnesium mine near the village of Rasinari in Transylvania have met with stiff opposition from locals. The project is being promoted as a way to reduce EU dependence on Chinese imports.
Plans to open a magnesium mine near Rasinari, a village in Romania’s Transylvania region, have divided the local community.
The company behind the project says the mine could help reduce the EU’s dependence on Chinese imports of this critical raw material. But residents fear damage to the environment, water pollution and the destruction of a landscape that is extremely precious to them and plays a key part in their lives and livelihoods.
The honeypot scandals that went down in the history books
A screengrab from CTI video footage obtained November 9, 2026 shows a woman identified by Reuters as Alice Huang after comparison with a photograph obtained separately, attending a dinner with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (in black) at a restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan May 22, 2025.
This week’s biggest news story reads like a spy thriller. Jensen Huang, the CEO of one of the world’s most powerful companies in the AI boom, resigned on Thursday after admitting to an extramarital affair with a suspected Chinese spy whom American officials say was recruited to collect information on him and influence his feelings about selling Nvidia’s AI chips to China.
It has all the makings of a honeypot operation: a covert scheme that uses romantic entanglements to extract intel on or compromise a target. Good ol’ fashion sexpionage, if you will. The term, originally “honeytrap,” was coined by British author John le Carré’s in his 1974 spy thriller “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” In a 1976 BBC interview, le Carré described the tactic as “where you put a girl in a chap’s way; it’s a sexual enticement operation.”
But the tactic is far older than the term. In the Bible, Samson falls for Delilah, who the Philistines bribed to figure out the source of Samson’s superhuman strength. During World War I, Dutch dancer and seductress Mata Hari was executed for allegedly spying on behalf of Germany. Huang is hardly the first to get stuck in a honeypot – including ones orchestrated by China.
The art of the “kompromat.” The Soviet Union had a long history of using sexual blackmail to target foreigners. Under Joseph Stalin, Soviet intelligence recruited sex workers to entrap visiting politicians and businessmen through Intourist, the state agency that managed foreign travel. The KGB equipped hotels across the Soviet Union with bugging devices and cameras to gather “kompromat,” which literally translates to “compromising material.”
One famous target was Joseph Alsop, an influential American journalist whose career nearly unraveled after a 1957 visit to Moscow. The night of his interview with Nikita Khrushchev, then on his way to becoming the leader of the Soviet Union, Alsop attended a dinner at Moscow’s Grand Hotel. There, he met what he later described as “an athletic blonde, pleasant-faced, pleasant-mannered fellow.”
The two later slept together that night, and KGB agents secretly photographed the encounter. The next day, Alsop said KGB officers stormed into his room brandishing the photos and tried to blackmail him into being a spy. He refused. Though distraught, Alsop informed the American Embassy and quickly left (and never returned to) the Soviet Union.
The Romeos.Women were also targets of honeypot operations. After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, East Germany’s Ministry for State Security, the Stasi, developed an elaborate scheme to seduce women in West Germany who had access to government secrets.
World War II had left Germany with a shortage of young men, while women of marrying age held positions in government, the military, and intelligence services. The Stasi saw an opportunity. It recruited men between the ages of 25 and 35 and sent them to the West. These agents, called “Romeos,”often claimed to be employees at humanitarian organizations and propositioned women to pass along secrets. It’s unknown how many women were duped by the scheme, but roughly 40 were prosecuted for espionage in West Germany over the course of four decades after becoming romantically involved with undercover Stasi officers.
Markus Wolf, the former head of East Germany’s spymaster who built the Romeo network, later mused during his retirement: “If I go down in espionage history, it may well be for perfecting the use of sex in spying.”
China’s honeypots. Beijing is no stranger to the tactic either. Former CIA officers and US officials say China’s Ministry of State Security has long recruited women – and occasionally men – to cultivate romantic relationships with targets.
The most well-known case dates back to the 1960s, when French diplomat BernardBoursicotbegan an affair with Shi Peipu, a Peking Opera singer. Over their two-decade relationship, Boursicot passed Shi roughly 150 documents, which he relayed to China. In 1983, French authorities arrested them for espionage. Boursicot said he only learned then that Shi was a man. Both were convicted and pardoned four years later in an effort to diffuse tensions between France and China. Their story inspired David Henry Hwang’s play “M. Butterfly.”
More recent examples of possible honeypots from China also exist. In 2003, an FBI agent, James Smith, who worked in Chinese counterintelligence, admitted to a nearly 20-year affair with a Chinese American businesswoman suspected of being a Chinese double agent. And this summer, declassified FBI files showed former US Representative Eric Swalwell acknowledged having a romantic relationship between 2012 and 2015 with Christine Fang, or Fang Fang, whom US officials believed to be a Chinese spy.
The threat appears to still worry both Washington and Beijing. This spring, China announced it had foiled three spying plots, including one in which a public servant was lured by the “seductive beauty” of a foreign agent. China then warned government workers to remain vigilant against overseas threats. Last year, the US banned American government personnel in China from having romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens. And in February, the US Army posted an AI-generated image on social media of a soldier sitting next to a blushing woman at a bar asking, “Are you a spy? Because you’re way too cute to be talking to me!”
Trending Stories
The irony, of course, is that Jensen Huang is at the center of the most advanced industry in the world, but may have fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book.
Entertainer and children’s author David Walliams is alleged to have used his fame to approach teenage girls, in some cases reportedly initiating sexual contact with them. Walliams has denied the allegations, but the claims raise some familiar tropes about grooming: why did she go, why didn’t she say no, why didn’t she tell anyone?
After a legal battle, ITV News and The Guardian have now published the findings of a three-year investigation into Walliams, reporting allegations that date back to 2003.
In this and other cases, there will always be people who focus not on the claims, but on the young person and what they should have done differently. Linguistic research on how grooming actually works suggests that this instinct is exactly the result that grooming is designed to produce.
Many people imagine sexual grooming as a recognisable and clearly staged process. Build friendship, then trust, then secrecy – all leading towards the offender’s ultimate goal of sexual gratification. But if this were the case, victims could notice the steps and walk away.
Along with a colleague, I undertook linguistic analysis of real chatroom conversations between convicted offenders and adult volunteers posing as 12 to 14-year-old girls. The conversations were made public by the now defunct organisation Perverted Justice, whose activity led to the apprehension and conviction of the offenders. In our analysis, we did not find the pattern mentioned above.
We identified 14 recurring “moves” – parts of the offenders’ language that have particular functions. These include building rapport (for instance by sharing personal stories), assessing risk by checking parents’ schedules or the presence of a boyfriend, escalating sexual topics and planning offline meetings. But these moves overlapped and repeated, with no typical structure emerging.
More than 84,000 people start the day with our Daily Email.
Rather, offenders seemed to tailor their grooming styles, perhaps according to their individual goals and who they believed they were talking to.
Trust and rapport
What was consistent was the large amount of rapport-building, which often ran through the whole interaction. Grooming research invariably shows that rapport-building and trust development are the central devices used to persuade and manipulate.
This may be through compliments, sharing personal information and declarations of trust. Grooming strategies are designed to develop intimacy and trust, isolate the victim and dismantle the “red flags” that might alert them to the manipulative nature of the conversation. Trust development makes it much harder for victims to notice devious intentions – there is no obvious point at which the young person has failed to spot something plainly visible.
Offenders in our data spent much of their conversations sizing up their targets. They would try to work out whether a target was likely to engage, suited their preferences, was accessible and unlikely to expose them. We called this a “risk-reward ratio assessment” – in other words, a judgement about whether this person was worth their effort.
In another study, we examined the case of an offender who took a scattergun approach, in this case targeting nearly 1,000 potential young victims. This individual would strategically cycle through an array of fake online personas to identify the one most likely to “hook” his target.The vast majority ignored or rejected his first advance, at which point they were dropped. But this is the point of the scattergun approach; a small percentage, usually the most vulnerable, will respond.
Our work also revealed how offenders manage the risk of being caught. For many we studied, a key strategy was to use language that shifted responsibility on to the target.
Questions were often formulated to elicit sexually explicit content by positioning the target as the one in control.The groomer might say, for example, “how far do you want to go”, “tell me what you wanna do”. This phrasing both presumes interest and makes declining more difficult, while laying the groundwork to say later that the young person had led the conversation.
Another feature was what we termed the “mitigating lol”. This could be something like “u should send me a nude vid lol”. This served to reduce the impact of a sexual question by implying playfulness. It also supports future claims that the requests was insincere – possibly a useful tactic in a trial. We can only infer the purpose, but it points to the same strategy of building in deniability.
I cannot speak directly to the Walliams allegations, but when it comes to celebrities in general, the task of building trust and rapport may well be easier. The victims already feel they know them, and are made to feel special by being approached. It’s also easy to see how the perks of celebrity could do much of the persuasive work.
Walliams has denied allegations from The Guardian and ITV News that he pursued young women via email and phone calls. Neil Hall/EPA
A widely used definition of grooming across linguistics and psychology describes preparing the child, their significant adults and the wider environment for abuse. Compliance and secrecy are explicit goals. They are not evidence of the victim’s character.
So when people ask, “why did they keep replying?” or “why did they go to the house?” they are asking why a technique that was designed to engage did in fact keep them engaged. When we ask, “why didn’t they tell anyone?” we are questioning why a strategy engineered to cultivate silence did exactly that.
Grooming involves a complex network of strategies. But we know it is never the young person’s behaviour that’s the problem. The “perfect victim” who resists every advance and raises the alarm at every opportunity is a myth.
Better understanding of the strategies can help caregivers, educators and children to recognise grooming earlier. It should also shape what we say to victims after the fact. Let’s stop asking why they gave their email address, why they went to the house, why they didn’t tell anyone. Let’s question instead the actions of those responsible.
Emily ChiangResearch Associate, Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics, Aston University
Disclosure statement
Emily Chiang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Partners
Aston University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.
The Conversation UK receives funding from these organisations
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence.Republish this article
Journalism powered by people like you.
At The Conversation, we do news differently. We turn to experts, question hype, and put people at the centre of our journalism. If you value clear, independent insight, please consider supporting our work.
New proposals to stop childhood crimes closing doors for life
People who committed crimes as children but have since turned their lives around could be given a fresh start, as government consults on plans to stop lifelong disclosure for some childhood convictions.
Move to help those who have turned their lives around access jobs and education without being held back by their past
Public protection remains paramount, with safeguards for serious offences and sensitive roles
Part of wider Government reforms to ensure punishment cuts crime by helping young offenders turn their lives around
People who committed crimes as children but have since turned their lives around could be given a fresh start under plans unveiled by the Government today (Thursday 12 November).
The consultation comes just days after Youth Work Week (2–8 November), and delivers on a commitment in the Government’s Youth Justice White Paper to examine reforms to the childhood criminal records system.
Currently, many criminal record disclosure rules do not distinguish between offences committed by adults and children, despite young people having a greater capacity to change. This means – for example – someone convicted of robbery at 16, who has since turned their life around and never offended again, could still find their criminal record holding them back from certain jobs years later.
The proposals would stop many childhood offences following people into adulthood by ending lifelong disclosure for some convictions, removing disclosure of out-of-court resolutions, and reducing or removing disclosure of convictions that resulted in a fine.
Crucially, public protection will remain paramount, meaning the reforms would not apply to those with convictions for serious violent offences, such as violent and sexual crimes.
Minister for youth justice, sentencing and technology, Jake Richards, said:
Children who commit crimes must face the consequences. But those who turn their lives around shouldn’t be condemned to carry their mistakes forever.
Too often, a childhood criminal record can close doors to jobs, education and the chance to build a better future.
I want to give people a fair chance to move on from their past, while ensuring the public remains protected from those who pose a risk.
To mark the consultation’s launch, Minister Richards convened a roundtable with leading businesses, including KPMG, Timpson and Greene King, to hear firsthand how childhood criminal records can create barriers to employment and discuss how reforms could help people access opportunities.
Satvir Kaur, Minister for safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, said:
While it is important that children who make mistakes and learn from them can rebuild their lives and their future, protecting and safeguarding our communities will always be at the heart of our decision-making. This is particularly important when it comes to protecting children and those who are most vulnerable.
There are some convictions, particularly for serious violent and sexual offences, that will always need to be disclosed. We are going further to strengthen these safeguards.
However, children who have committed less serious offences should not be defined by their mistakes forever and should have the opportunity to rebuild their lives. I look forward to wider engagement on this issue so that we can strike the right balance.
People who find work after leaving prison are far less likely to reoffend. Employment plays a vital role in rehabilitation, providing stability, routine, purpose and a pathway to a better future. More than 90% of businesses that employ prison leavers say they are motivated, dependable and have strong attendance records.
Today’s announcement comes ahead of Alan Milburn’s review, which is due to conclude later this month. The Government’s wider action to tackle youth unemployment includes a £2.5 billion package which will support almost one million young people and create 500,000 opportunities.
The Government is focused on breaking down the barriers that can shut young people out of work and opportunity, including by ensuring youth offending does not unnecessarily close doors for the rest of their lives.
Penelope Gibbs, Director of Transform Justice, said:
Criminal records (DBS) checks are an essential tool for safeguarding individuals, but a childhood misdemeanour should not prevent someone volunteering or getting work decades later. Our current system means that a child who commits an offence aged 12 and receives a community sentence will often still have to disclose that offence thirty years later. Even if they have led a crime free life for all those 30 years.
The Government’s proposals will help rehabilitate a generation of children, and enable them to engage fully in work and society.
Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are both cautious, calm, compromise-minded leaders fantasizing about a serious, sensible Democratic-run Congress, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a “Behind the Curtain” column.
But social media is a temptress no party leader has tamed. The seduction of attention, likes and followers invariably proves too strong for the savviest, most self-promotional politicians to resist.
Why it matters: That’s the lesson of the Internet Era of American Politics — the algorithms always win
A few provocative members of Congress and online activists dominate the national conversation because they master the biggest social media platforms. That creates the impression that their views reflect a party, or a nation, when in reality they don’t. And it shapes the party’s image and agenda.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), vice chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, told us: “Governing isn’t about getting the most followers on X — it’s about delivering actual results … It’s easy to scream and yell, and say no — it’s much harder to figure out a way forward.
“By the numbers: Michigan Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed had 1.6 million Instagram followers as of Sept. 13. Today: 7.6 million and rising. One clip of him pulled an estimated 50 million-plus views across X, Instagram and TikTok.
Schumer, who has led Senate Democrats since 2017, sits at 466,000 Instagram followers. A man who hasn’t been sworn in has roughly 15x the leader’s audience.
El-Sayedtelegraphed this in July: “If you’re Chuck Schumer, I’m pretty damn dangerous!” True.
Jeffries has nearly1 million followers on Instagram. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has 9.8 million on her personal account alone
Yes, President Trump remade the GOP. But social media sucked in countless others to try to copy him, pushing rhetoric or ideas few politicians would’ve touched in the past.
You see this in the rise of celebrity politicians who do little legislating but lots of instigating.
You see this in the explosion of not just Instagram, X and YouTube followers by politicians, but also in the many starting their own shows — unthinkable a decade ago. Several see themselves as content producers: California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas host podcasts while doing pretty important day jobs for big states. Trump started his own social media platform, Truth Social.
You see this in the daily media feeding frenzy when someone, somewhere goes viral because they lit up social media with a meme or menacing post
The trap is springing before Democrats have even been sworn in:
Several incoming senators have publicly said they won’t support Schumer as leader, calling for new blood and more fight. James Talarico of Texas has sidestepped the question for months.
Petitions to replace Schumer passed 100,000 signatures a day after launch. At Crooked Con, the post-election summit hosted in Washington last weekend by the parent company of “Pod Save America,” the crowd booed and jeered his name all day.
The pressure worked: Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who’s thinking about a 2028 presidential run, announced last night on MS NOW he’ll challenge Schumer for majority leader. (More in next item.)Doug Sosnik, a top official in Bill Clinton’s White House and closely followed analyst of Democratic politics, told us: “You would never know it from the internet or press coverage, but the fact is there are only 130,000 members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).”
“It has taken a while, but I think that Democrats have finally figured out that X/Twitter is not the real world,” Sosnik added. “The best proof point of Democrats’ ‘getting this’ was our success across the entire country.
What we’re watching: The biggest siren song of the algorithm this next year will be impeaching Trump.
Schumer and Jeffries have tried to set a disciplined path focused on affordability, not impeachment.
Trump is prone to taking provocative actions that would juice talk of impeachment. A crowded presidential primary field will make the topic even more tempting — a massive distraction for the new Democratic majorities.
Reality check: Schumer only needs about 29 of his members to vote for him in a secret caucus vote. He’ll likely win the room. But he’s losing the feed, and the feed sets the narrative.Among the senators-elect who say they won’t vote for Schumer are Adam Hamilton of Kansas and Troy Jackson of Maine. Running against your own leader is now a red state play, too
Accountability creep: In December, Jeffries waved off a Hegseth impeachment push. On Sunday, he said he was a “hard yes.” (House Republicans tanked the effort on Tuesday.) Bernie Sanders, the incoming HELP chair, says Democrats may go after RFK Jr. next, alongside aggressive investigations into Trump’s staff and family
To be fair: Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky forced the vote, and Jeffries tied it to an Iran war he says has driven up prices. But removal would take two-thirds of the Senate, which Democrats don’t have
The bitter truth is there’s little market for moderation or sanity or heads-down, excruciating policymaking. This wasn’t always true: Pre-internet, politics wasn’t minute-by-minute combat and most media played by similar rules and stuck to daily rhythms.
The bottom line: Democrats won the election on prices. They’ll lose the majority on posts.Axios’ Alex Thompson contributed reporting. Share this column.
DVD sales and rentals are on the rise after a yearslong decline as more people — especially younger cinephiles — rebuild their physical media libraries, Axios San Antonio’s Megan Stringer reports.Case in point: Adult DVD rentals from the San Antonio Public Library have surged 39% since 2022. DVD sales jumped 20% at Half Price Books’ San Antonio locations in the most recent fiscal year.“It’s the hunt, the find, sharing it — it’s all part of the process,” says Matt Dalton of Half Price Books.“There’s a younger generation shopping our stores, and I can see them get excited when they’re flipping through the bins or going through the aisles and finding that thing and holding it up. It’s pretty exciting.”Share this story … Get Axios San Antonio … Find your Axios Local city.
The exit of AI’s biggest evangelist from the stage will change some things, but AI transformation and adoption across industries will continue apace.
On Thursday, the Nvidia board of directors announced that Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang had resigned as president, CEO, and a board member, effective immediately. Huang’s exit comes just days after he confirmed his extramarital affair with a woman whom US intelligence has accused of being a Chinese spy, and the report broke of another affair with a direct report, Nvidia’s VP of healthcare, Kimberly Powell.
The interim CEO will be Colette Kress, Nvidia’s current EVP and CFO, who will continue to serve in these roles until a successor is named. The company’s structure is also changing, with Harvey C. Jones, former Synopsys CEO, appointed as its first-ever board chair. The board disclosed that it is already initiating a search for a permanent CEO.
People are already placing bets on Polymarket regarding who the next CEO may be, with Ian Buck, Nvidia VP and high-performance computing chief, leading the betting odds, followed by Kress and Rene Haas, CEO of Arm Holdings, with analysts making similar predictions.President Trump took to Truth Social to propose former Apple CEO Tim Cook as the next pick. While it is hard to say with confidence who will succeed Huang, since there was no plan in place to prepare the company for this moment, what we do know is that they will be pivotal in defining the entire AI industry, as Huang himself did.
During his tenure, Huang became one of the most influential figures of the current AI boom. Under his leadership, Nvidia invested heavily in its own customers, including cloud providers, suppliers and major AI labs, and some of that money returned in the form of chip purchases. Analysts have flagged these arrangements as potentially circular, while others argue they are a strategic way to lock customers into Nvidia’s ecosystem. If a new CEO scales back these investments, it could raise financing costs for companies that relied on Nvidia’s backing and reduce some of Nvidia’s own revenue.
Huang also became a prominent voice in Washington, and his close relationship with President Trump coincided with several policy outcomes favorable to Nvidia. According to CNBC, Huang and other Nvidia executives directed at least $26 million toward Trump-backed projects, and the company spent a record $2.15 million on federal lobbying in the third quarter. Huang lobbied against the GAIN AI Act, which would have restricted chip exports, and against state-level AI regulation in favor of a single federal framework.In December 2025, Trump approved sales of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, though Beijing has blocked them.
The uncertainty of what is to come in the next era of Nvidia is already being seen on the stock market. As of November 12, Nvidia shares “tumbled more than 12% in early trading, putting the company on course to lose about $500 billion in market value,” Reuters explained. Nvidia reached an all-time high $5.8 trillion market cap on October 6. Recent losses have pushed the value of the company down to $4 trillion.
Huang helped define how the AI industry builds and funds itself, with Nvidia acting as both supplier and financier to many of the leading players in the ecosystem. If a new CEO steps back from that model, the effects could ripple outward. That said, AI is now embedded in nearly every industry, and demand for the technology isn’t going away, even if the stock market and investors sour on the AI trade and its effects spread across the industry.The train has already left the station when it comes to enterprises and organizations of all sizes investing in AI to streamline work, enhance productivity, and transform their relationship with software. While Nvidia’s path forward may change how AI companies get financed, it won’t change the fact that the years ahead are going to be all about a lot more professionals and organizations putting AI to work in more and more practical ways.
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.
Put experts in your inbox. Get our daily newsletter
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.
‘Honeytrap’ agents
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.
Mata Hari, a Dutch dancer and spy, was executed in 1917 having promised intelligence to both the French and German militaries. These intrigues were based on her entanglements with senior military officials on both sides.
Later, during the cold war, the Soviets and East Germans refined their use of so-called “honeytrap” agents towards using ordinary looking, reasonably well-educated men and women with whom a relationship would look believable. These relationships often began without coercion and consequently the betrayal of secrets was more enduring and deniable.
A large number of western officials were recalled home from Moscow or Soviet satellite states during this period after being caught in compromising and staged situations with Russian agents. There were some, like British civil servant John Vassall, whose compromised status was not detected and who spied for the Soviet Union.
Intelligence agencies also had conspicuous success during the cold war through the exploitation of closeted gay men like Vassall and the Canadian ambassador to Moscow, John Watkins, whose compromise might see them prosecuted if they did not comply.
Mata Hari, who spied for France and Germany during the first world war, on the day of her arrest in February 1917. Wikimedia Commons
According to author Henry Schlesinger, the purpose of sexpionage falls into four categories. First is to control or coerce the target, persuading them to spy. Second is to collect “pillow talk”, the injudicious comments to a lover in an intimate moment and giving access to their phones or computers.
The third category is collecting information that allows for further exploitation of the target. Minor legal snags such as recreational drug use or driving infringements can be leveraged further. And the fourth is collecting a means by which to discredit protest or political movements.
If we bring sexpionage to the modern day, what might an intelligence agency or officer be considering when targeting a technology executive?
Receiving forewarning of US government decisions is a key interest for China, as is gauging the extent to which the US tech industry relies on Taiwan. Moreover, access to technology or finance executives and companies is valuable.
We also need to consider the incentives of technology leaders. Private firms are not obliged to engage in counterintelligence, the business of finding spies. Stopping a major commercial partnership because there is some evidence of exposure to a foreign government could also be seen as bad business.
However, businesses should have some curiosity in who they are trading with, not least because of the strong market responses to this. Nvidia’s share price tumbled US$330 billion (£246 billion) after the company announced it would launch an investigation into the recent reports.
Governments need to watch closely for compromise activities against companies they now think of as core infrastructure. In the Nvidia case, it has been reported that US government officials suspected there was a problem before allowing the company’s advanced H200 chips to be exported to China.
This is the sort of vulnerability intelligence agencies are there to prevent.
Robert DoverProfessor of Intelligence and National Security & Dean of Faculty, University of Hull
Disclosure statement
Robert Dover does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence.Republish this article
Get our world affairs briefing
We’re living in an era of profound and rapid global change. Old certainties are giving way to tectonic shifts in the world order. Sign up here to get the sharpest academic analysis of the big international stories delivered directly to your inbox each Thursday.
A few provocative members of Congress and online activists dominate the national conversation because they master the biggest social media platforms. That creates the impression that their views reflect a party, or a nation, when in reality they don’t. And it shapes the party’s image and agenda.
Yes, President Trump remade the GOP. But social media sucked in countless others to try to copy him, pushing rhetoric or ideas few politicians would’ve touched in the past.
The trap is springing before Democrats have even been sworn in:
What we’re watching: The biggest siren song of the algorithm this next year will be impeaching Trump.
Accountability creep: In December, Jeffries 
