China’s Historic Honey Trap: Still Used in Modern Warfare?
The honey trap is one of the pivotal stratagems in Chinese military strategy. Among the ancient Chinese military treatise “Thirty-Six Stratagems,” the 31st is the honey trap. The most famous honey trap in history revolves around Xi Shi. In 494 BC, King Goujian of the state of Yue suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of King Fuchai of the state of Wu. He was even subjected to the humiliation of serving as a stable keeper. Enduring bitter hardships to seek revenge, Goujian deployed the honey trap. He offered Xi Shi, widely regarded as the most stunning beauty of the era, to King Fuchai of Wu. The strategy proved to be a resounding success. Infatuated with Xi Shi, Fuchai neglected affairs of state, leading to the decline of Wu and its eventual destruction following an attack by Yue. Is China’s honey trap merely an ancient military tactic? It remains a signature strategy frequently mobilized by China in both modern and contemporary eras. Here are a few representative cases.
① The Zheng Pingru Affair
Zheng Pingru was a female spy active in Shanghai in the late 1930s. As an operative for the Chinese Nationalist Party’s intelligence apparatus during the Second Sino-Japanese War, she used her beauty to enter high society. She approached Ding Mocun, the intelligence chief of the Japanese puppet regime, and attempted to assassinate him. Her story served as the inspiration for director Ang Lee’s film “Lust, Caution.”
② The Shi Pei Pu Affair
Men have also been deployed in honey traps. Between the 1960s and 1980s, Bernard Boursicot, an employee at the French Embassy in Beijing, fell in love with Shi Pei Pu, a male Peking Opera singer who performed female roles. Over roughly two decades, Boursicot leaked more than 500 French diplomatic documents to China. The film “M. Butterfly” was produced based on this true story.
③ The Christine Fang Affair
In the 2010s, Christine Fang, an operative of China’s Ministry of State Security, entered the United States under the guise of an international student. She forged close ties with influential politicians, including U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell. Building a network across political circles through inappropriate relationships, she collected internal intelligence. When pursued by the FBI, she fled to China.
Is Alice Huang Truly a Spy?
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has admitted to an extramarital affair. U.S. agencies, including the FBI and CIA, are investigating his affair partner, Alice Huang (Chinese name Huang Le), as an intelligence operative linked to China’s Ministry of State Security. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has vehemently pushed back, calling it black propaganda. However, beyond China’s past record of utilizing honey traps, multiple circumstances cast suspicion on Alice Huang as an intelligence operative.
① The Curious Growth of Megaspeed
Megaspeed is a Singaporean firm where Alice Huang served as the de facto owner and a senior executive. It was originally a small business with around 10 resident employees. In late 2023, Alice Huang acquired it through a shell company in the Virgin Islands. Immediately afterward, it was designated as an official Nvidia cloud partner. After founding the subsidiary SpeedMatrix in 2024, it purchased more than $4.8 billion worth of chips from Nvidia, rapidly emerging as Nvidia’s largest client in Southeast Asia. A small local outfit with virtually no presence suddenly became the top buyer of cutting-edge semiconductors in Southeast Asia. Around this time, Alice and Jensen Huang also began to be spotted together.
② Opaque Career and Identity of Alice Huang
Alice Huang’s background, career, and identity also remain cloaked in secrecy. Her profile on Simuwang, a Chinese private equity information portal, reportedly lists her as a former reporter for Hunan TV who later worked at CITIC Securities and handled investment-related duties at Shanghai Hexi Investment Management. Yet reporting by foreign news outlets has failed to verify any of this employment history. There is virtually no public record explaining how she built the wealth or connections necessary to establish a company capable of executing 6.5 trillion won in transactions with Nvidia.
③ Suspicious Chip Distribution Routes
The catalyst for this controversy was an investigation into illegal bypass export networks of Nvidia’s cutting-edge GPUs in Southeast Asia. Outlets including The New York Times and the Financial Times reported that the U.S. Department of Commerce and intelligence agencies launched an investigation in late 2024 after detecting suspicious circumstances in which large quantities of Nvidia’s latest AI accelerators were stored in unopened packaging at a data center in Malaysia. While tracing the smuggling route into China based on this lead, Alice Huang emerged as a target of surveillance.
What Was the Objective of the Approach?
If Alice Huang is indeed an operative for the Chinese government, what was she after in approaching Jensen Huang? What missions could she have carried out?
① Neutralizing the U.S. Export Control Network on Advanced Chips
Starting in 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce instituted an outright ban on exports of advanced AI-related chips to China. For China, Nvidia’s advanced chips are essential not only for AI competition, but also across various fields including robotics development, military weapons, and strengthening security systems. Establishing a personal relationship with the CEO of that firm represents the ultimate solution. It would secure reliable sponsorship to obtain priority allocations of massive GPU shipments under the name of a “third-country partner company” before diverting them to AI research institutes or military supercomputing centers in mainland China.
② Uncovering Next-Generation AI Chip Architecture and Roadmap Secrets
Next-generation GPU architecture design specifications, packaging technologies, and supply chain bottleneck statuses are critical intelligence assets in the tech cold war. Obtaining roadmap or technical information through informal channels ahead of official announcements provides immense assistance in steering the R&D direction of Chinese state-run semiconductor manufacturers and Big Tech firms.
③ Gathering High-Level U.S. Policy Currents and Network Trends
Jensen Huang is a key adviser involved in formulating White House AI national security strategy and technology policy. He could be utilized as a channel to glean top-tier intelligence, including the timeline of future U.S. administration sanctions, internal currents among White House aides, and supply chain contingency plans regarding the Taiwan Strait.
④ Seizing Leverage for Crucial Moments
An extramarital affair itself can serve as potent leverage depending on how it is used. To prevent Nvidia from cooperating with the U.S. government on measures such as tightening sanctions against China, the scandal surrounding the CEO’s personal life could be weaponized for blackmail. It may also have been prepared as a pressure card for a variety of other scenarios.
Why Are We Trembling?
South Korean media are not racing to give major coverage to this case out of mere curiosity. It involves a company considered an indispensable partner to the semiconductor industry that underpins South Korea’s economy. Depending on how circumstances unfold, this could become a massive tsunami engulfing the domestic economy.
The base scenario for this situation is that Nvidia maintains its Jensen Huang leadership. In this case, the investigation into bypass exports to China concludes with Nvidia viewed largely as a victim, avoiding heavy responsibility and receiving fines for a few statutory violations. AI investment sentiment would inevitably contract, but because the dip would be temporary, existing HBM supply roadmaps would remain intact. A stress scenario involves CEO Jensen Huang having to face suspension or resignation. As the U.S. government tightens sanctions against China even further, Nvidia’s chip development roadmap would inevitably face delays. Naturally, Big Tech’s AI capital expenditures would turn conservative, dealing a substantial blow to South Korea’s semiconductor industry. The worst-case scenario is if Jensen Huang is dismissed and faces criminal prosecution. The U.S. government would impose high-intensity sanctions on Nvidia, leaving the launch of next-generation GPUs indefinitely adrift. This would trigger the collapse of the global AI bubble. Under such circumstances, a “compound crisis” would arrive, simultaneously hitting South Korea’s exports, economic growth rate, financial markets, and national fiscal health.
The domestic political situation in the United States surrounding this issue is already complicated. While U.S. President Trump has come to Jensen Huang’s defense, expressing trust in the CEO, Democrats holding power in Congress appear to be tightening their offensive. It has become a hot-button issue in American partisan warfare. A three-pronged storm is closing in: an independent investigation by Nvidia’s board of directors, the ongoing FBI probe, and an inquiry at the U.S. congressional level. There is no guarantee that the worst-case scenario outlined above will not materialize. South Korea’s economy is trembling under the shadow of a Chinese honey trap looming behind an affair involving the CEO of the world’s foremost AI company—a truly confounding state of affairs.
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.
