Forget malware. The latest and greatest threat to national cybersecurity comes with a smile and an apparent romantic preference for schlubby tech workers.
At least, that’s according to The Times: the British newspaper reported this week that China and Russia are deploying their finest babes to seduce tech industry professionals throughout the western world to gain valuable secrets, a practice it calls “sex warfare.”
The Times cites a slew of “industry insiders” who warned about sophisticated plots involving young women charming Silicon Valley workers into giving up previous insider info — in some cases, allegedly even going as far as to build loving families with their victims.
“It’s the Wild West out there,” one insider declared.
Though it’s possible that some foreign operatives are playing these incredible long cons, consider us skeptical. Technically referred to as a “honey trap,” the accusation has its roots in Cold War-era propaganda, where rumors of KGB vixens trained in the arts of seduction spread far and wide, fueled by literature like James Bond and no small number of sensational CIA memoirs.
In The Times‘ reporting, it’s not always clear whether sources’ accusations are grounded in fact or are more of a hunch. James Mulvenon, chief intelligence officer at Pamir Consulting, told The Times he’s been “getting an enormous number of very sophisticated LinkedIn requests from the same type of attractive young Chinese woman… It really seems to have ramped up recently.”
Mulvenon described a recent business conference on investment risk in Virginia, when two Chinese women — “attractive” ones, he assured the newspaper — tried to gain entry without credentials. “We didn’t let them in, but they had all the information [about the event] and everything else,” he told the paper.
Whether a bit of spy-thriller roleplay or just straight up sinophobia, Mulvenon’s not the only one feeling a bit of paranoia as geopolitical rivalries ramp up.
Another source told The Times about a “beautiful” Russian woman who married an American colleague she met while working at an aerospace company.
“Showing up, marrying a target, having kids with a target — and conducting a lifelong collection operation, it’s very uncomfortable to think about but it’s so prevalent,” the source claimed.
In reality, cases of honey traps with credible evidence are pretty rare. There are some well documented cases of extortion, like that of CIA officer and anti-Communist Joseph Alsop being seduced during a trip to Moscow and subsequently blackmailed by Soviet authorities, but whether the seduction itself was part of a crafty plot remains unclear. Beside the Cold War, recent decades haven’t been bursting with prominent examples.
As Amanda Ohlke, the director of adult education at the International Spy Museum puts it, “there isn’t official data on honey trapping, and it is only one aspect of the many ways intelligence agencies might elicit information.”
In any case, the accusation itself probably tells you all you need to know about the present state of the world.
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