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- Sangita Myska: If China can honey-trap tech bros, it can do it in Britain. We have fragile male egos too
Sangita Myska: If China can honey-trap tech bros, it can do it in Britain. We have fragile male egos too
As too many recent cases remind us – remember Prince Andrew’s aide? – Beijing is undertaking influence operations in this country. Protecting ourselves without cutting ties completely is not easy, writes the Nerve’s political commentator
Nov 10, 2026
In the big-tech arms race between the United States and China, it appears the most powerful weapon of all may be human frailty.
The CEO and co-founder of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, is being investigated by his own company after admitting to an affair with an executive suspected of being a Chinese spy.
The 63-year-old, who has quite the cult following among sweaty-leather-loving tech geeks, is credited with turning Nvidia into a corporate behemoth and the most powerful AI business in the world. It has delivered the US a competitive advantage over its international rivals. Huang’s chipmaker, which makes the tech that powers artificial intelligence, is now worth more than $4tn and has been described by the New York Times as “the engine of the data centre boom powering the US economy”. Huang’s importance to Nvidia’s strategic direction is such that the company’s share price tumbled a whopping 10%, wiping billions off its value, as traders freaked out over his possible professional demise. Huang is one of Donald Trump’s closest AI advisers – leading to accusations that the president overlooked security concerns arising from the affair at exactly the same time as Huang was urging a loosening of export controls to China.
Across the pond, it’s been wall-to-wall coverage of the motherboard of all sex scandals – producing coverage that‘s a mix of FT meets PopBitch. While the affair and its implications remain under investigation, the fear is that this is a classic honey-trap in which a rich, powerful man is lured into sharing nationally important trade secrets over pillow-talk.
This summer, a Border Force officer and his Chinese “handler” were jailed for spying on Hong Kong pro-democracy dissidents in the UK
In the UK, parliamentarians have been the focus of China’s intelligence services for some time. Among those targeted was shadow foreign secretary Tom Tugendhat, who, speaking on the BBC this week, suggested it was possible that the family of Huang’s lover may have been threatened in order to force her to become a spy – something the Chinese government strongly denies. Tugendhat was one of a number of British politicians and human rights activists previously sanctioned by the Chinese government for their vocal criticism of the oppression of Uyghur Muslims.
Iain Duncan-Smith was another of those sanctioned. The former Tory leader previously told me three years ago he believed that China presented a “systemic threat” to the UK and lamented the fact that it viewed our country as “soft and weak”. It’s hard not to agree, especially in a post-Brexit era in which the UK has become desperate for trade deals that might boost our struggling economy. Government data makes depressing reading: while the value of UK trade with China is steadily increasing, our trade deficit with the world’s manufacturing superpower remains at a staggering £49bn a year. That means they make significantly more money out of us than we make out of them. It also means that scaling back or even temporarily disengaging diplomatically with China in response to threats – as Duncan-Smith demands – is almost impossible.
This presents one obvious problem: given its upper hand, how audacious would the Chinese government be while operating on UK soil? As it turns out: very. This summer, when the high court was rubber-stamping a highly controversial Chinese-mega embassy, a Border Force officer and his “handler” were jailed for spying on Hong Kong pro-democracy dissidents in the UK. Last year, Matthew Collins, the UK’s deputy national security adviser, warned that China’s intelligence services were carrying out “large-scale espionage operations” that threatened the UK’s economy and security after the failed prosecution of two suspected Chinese spies; and a year before that, an alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo, engaged in what appeared to be a full-on bromance with ex-Prince Andrew’s top aide. Court papers revealed that the aide had sent “fawning letters” to Tengbo in which the ex-royal was described as “desperate”. So effective was the alleged espionage operation that Tengbo was authorised to act on the ex-prince’s behalf in what has been described as “an international financial initiative” involving Chinese investors.
All this is to say that if the Chinese Communist party can get an alleged spy into the top tier of the British establishment, what’s to stop it infiltrating the top tier of management of an infrastructure-critical UK corporation? From the looks of it, relatively little. In 2023, Tugendhat – then minister for security – helped introduce the National Security Act 2023, which created a framework for countering state threats. While the strongest powers under the act were applied to Russia and Iran, China remains exempt. Both this Labour government and the last Tory one continue to tread the same difficult diplomatic path, the official line being: “The current government has said that while it acknowledges the threats from China, and will continue to counter them, it must continue to work with China to pursue a strong economic relationship.”
There is a grim reality to this position. Britain is, after all, a middling power that has to perform a diplomatic high-wire act: on one hand, recognising and managing our economic dependency on China while defending us against its proven desire to meddle in UK politics and threaten our national security. Nevertheless, there are things the UK government can do, including recognising that the threat from China is on par with that from Russia and Iran, clarifying British red lines and significantly boosting investment in anti-espionage units. The alleged Huang honey-trap alongside a seduction-of-sorts of a former royal with an alleged spy should act as a timely reminder that it’s often the fragile egos of rich and influential men that could provide the UK’s rivals with the softest target of all.
Sangita Myska is an award-winning journalist and presenter best known for her political and social commentary. She writes a twice-monthly column for the Nerve
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth holds a press conference at the Pentagon today. Photo: Nathan Howard/AP 
Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon this morning: “They impeached President Trump over a perfect phone call. They impeached him again in his final week in office,” referencing Trump’s first impeachment over a phone call in which he pressed Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his second over the Jan. 6 attack.
Hegseth also defended controversial U.S. military operations in Iran, Venezuela and the Caribbean.
/ @gzeromedia
