A screenshot from CTI video footage obtained on November 9, 2026 shows a woman identified by Reuters as Alice Huang after comparison with a separately obtained photograph, attending a dinner with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (in black) at a restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan, on May 22, 2025.
CTI via Reuters
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CTI via Reuters
One of the world’s oldest espionage tactics appears to have helped topple one of the world’s richest men. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned Thursday after revelations that he had an affair with a client that U.S. intelligence identified as a Chinese spy, according to the New York Times.
NPR has not independently confirmed the Times’ reporting that Huang also had a unrelated matter with a manager of the company who reported to him. The Chinese government called the espionage accusation “nothing but slander against China.”
Using a romantic relationship to gather intelligence from strangers – a so-called honeytrap – has a long history in China and beyond. China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s main civilian intelligence agency, regularly attempts to recruit women and sometimes men for honeytraps, according to former CIA officers and other U.S. officials familiar with Chinese espionage.
Some target businessmen for industrial espionage or to obtain information on the economic and political strategy of foreign governments. Pierre Mattisa former CIA counterintelligence analyst, said honeytraps also serve as influence operations with spies trying to gain enough trust to shape the target’s thinking about China.
“A global approach to society”
“The most important thing we should pay attention to is that the Ministry of State Security celebrates a tradition of interfering in the enemy’s decision-making,” said Mattis, the ministry’s chairman. Jamestown Foundationa national security think tank based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on the United States’ geopolitical rivals.
Nicolas Effimiadewho spent more than 34 years in the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency and now teaches at Penn State, said the honey trap is just one of many tactics that use ordinary Chinese citizens to gather information at home and abroad.
“Unlike the CIA, MI6 or any other Western service, China has a ‘whole-of-society approach,'” said Eftimiades, the author of Chinese Intelligence Operations: An Analysis of the Intelligence Services of the People’s Republic of China. “Chinese law supports this. The 2017 National Intelligence Law requires citizens to cooperate in intelligence collection efforts.”
A long list of honey traps
The Chinese government has used 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 Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell before and after he became a member of Congress.
The FBI warned Swalwell that it believed Fang was a spy. He denied doing anything wrong and she ran away in 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 relationships with two FBI agents and the bureau later determined that she was a double agent.
The most notable honeytrap case dates back to the 1960s, when a young French diplomat began a nearly two-decade affair with a Beijing opera performer, whom he thought was a woman. The story inspired the play and the film, M Papillon.
The woman involved in the Nvidia case, Alice Huang, is a Chinese businesswoman whose company, Megaspeed, was a major buyer of Nvidia’s advanced chips. The Times reported that the United States was monitoring her and learned of her ties to Chinese state security through her communications.
The logo of data center company Megaspeed International is pictured at its offices at the Ocean Financial Center in Singapore November 10, 2026. The woman accused of spying for China during an affair with Jensen Huang, head of U.S. artificial intelligence chip titan Nvidia, has been named in media reports as CTO Alice Huang, said to have been a senior figure at the Singapore-based company.
Taryn Ng/AFP via Getty Images
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Taryn Ng/AFP via Getty Images
Desmond Shum, a Hong Kong businessman and former China expert, says Alice Huang doesn’t fit the usual profile in these cases. She appears to be what the Chinese call a “white glove” — or spokesperson for multibillion-dollar business deals, which Shum said could have sheltered her from the Ministry of State Security.
Shum doesn’t think Alice Huang is a professional spy, pointing out that she has not been discreet on social media, posting photos of her visits to luxurious country clubs and posh foreign destinations.
“A spy wouldn’t do that,” Shum told NPR from his home in the United Kingdom.
Isaac Poisson Pierrea former Chinese journalist who runs Strategy Risks, a China-focused economic intelligence firm, says the Ministry of State Security – or MSS – could have contacted Alice Huang. after learning of her affair with the boss of Nvidia.
“One imagines that every time a Chinese person enters into a romantic relationship with a very, very powerful American, MSS notices,” Stone Fish said.
The stuff of spy novels and films
Honey traps are a staple of the plots of spy novels and films, including the Netflix series, Black doves, The Americans on FX, Apple TV Slow horses as well as James Bond films, like From Russia with love.
In reality, when Chinese state security contacts women for these operations, it is embarrassing and humiliating. This tactic perpetuates racist and sexist stereotypes while casting suspicion on the vast majority of Chinese people who had nothing to do with intelligence gathering.
Besides China, many intelligence services have engaged in honey traps. Russians have always used sex workers for blackmail and influence. During the Cold War, East Germany sent well-educated and well-mannered male spies – known as Romeos – in West Germany.
Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, used honey traps from the 1950s to the 1970s in countries including Egypt, Iraq and Iran. But investigative journalist Yossi Melman, who has written numerous books on Israeli intelligence, says the practice has declined as cyberespionage and digital traps have proven more effective.
The United States used sex entrapment against the Soviets, but several former officials said Americans now preferred to appeal to people for ideological reasons and provide them with 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 telltale signs of a honey trap, ego and vanity remain human weaknesses and men continue to succumb, Eftimiades said.
“Welcome to the male of the species,” he said. “Does everyone know about this? Yes. Does everyone think this is going to happen to them? No. And, you know, and it happens all the time.”
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