News that Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang potentially became a Chinese intelligence target this month has raised fresh concerns about the communist regime’s espionage efforts against the United States and its citizens.
Huang acknowledged in a Nov. 8 message to Nvidia employees that he had an extramarital affair with a woman whom U.S. intelligence suspected of working for Beijing. Nvidia announced on Nov. 8 that its board of directors had initiated an independent probe into reports that Huang was “the target of a foreign intelligence effort.”
President Donald Trump, when asked about the affair at a Nov. 9 briefing, said, “I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else, and I think that he’ll be in good shape.”
At the heart of the controversy is Huang Le, also known as Alice Huang, who is not related to Jensen Huang, and a former executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-registered artificial intelligence company and a major customer of Nvidia’s sophisticated semiconductors.
The New York Times reported in October, citing unnamed sources, that Alice Huang, with whom Jensen Huang had an affair, was identified by U.S. intelligence officials as having been recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security, the regime’s premier intelligence agency.
The alleged plot followed years of warnings about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) espionage operations on U.S. soil.
In addition to technology-centered efforts, such as cyberattacks and electronic surveillance, the regime is known to employ traditional human intelligence campaigns that leverage personal connections to gain access to influential figures, obtain targeted information, or exert influence.
Key among the human intelligence tactics are honey traps, or honeypots, which typically lure a target with sex or a romantic relationship, then blackmail him to achieve intelligence or political goals.
“The use of romantic or personal relationships for intelligence gathering is nothing new,” Andrew Harding, a policy analyst for China and the Indo-Pacific at The Heritage Foundation, told The Epoch Times via email. “China has employed these types of tactics in intelligence operations.”
The latest case involving Nvidia’s CEO should serve as “a reminder that the CCP is willing to target individuals who possess information, access, or technology that could advance Beijing’s interests at the expense of the United States,” he said.
“As the United States’ primary strategic adversary, the CCP will exploit a wide range of vulnerabilities to gain access to sensitive information and individuals.”
‘Long-Term Plan’
Those in public or private positions of national security importance are particularly vulnerable to such covert espionage efforts, Harding said.
The U.S. government has long required personnel with access to sensitive information to report certain relationships and other foreign contacts.
The Trump administration in October 2025 confirmed the dismissal of a U.S. diplomat who, the authorities said, admitted to concealing a “romantic relationship” with a Chinese woman linked to the CCP.
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement at the time that the department maintains “a zero-tolerance policy for any employee who is caught undermining our country’s national security.”
Members of Congress, however, are not subject to security clearances—and for years, there have been concerns about their potential exposure to Beijing’s intelligence or influence operations.
One of the most high-profile honey trap cases involves Christine Fang, or Fang Fang, a suspected Chinese operative who entered the United States as a college student in the early 2010s and later cultivated relationships with a number of politicians in California and elsewhere.
Fang approached Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) as early as 2012, when he was a local city council member and running for his first congressional campaign, according to FBI files declassified in August. By 2014, she had fundraised for Swalwell’s reelection campaign.
The case never resulted in charges. The declassified documents showed that Swalwell told FBI agents that he had a sexual relationship with Fang before he was elected to Congress. Swalwell has not publicly acknowledged having such a relationship. The congressman resigned in April after sexual assault allegations involving several women, unrelated to Fang’s case, surfaced.
Fang returned to China in 2015. The FBI memorandum identified Fang as connected to the regime’s Ministry of State Security. Her parents, the files said, were senior CCP officials.
“She was prepared to use sex as a way of gaining entry into the American political system, and that she was also interested in making donations as a way of gaining influence inside the circles,” a senior U.S. official told reporters in August following the document’s release.
Experts say Fang’s case offers a glimpse into Beijing’s strategy planning: a willingness to invest in the long game.
“For the Chinese government, they can plan for 40 years, and they can carry it out step by step,” Zhang Tianliang, a senior fellow at the Consilium Institute and a professor at Fei Tian College in New York, said on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” in July.
“It’s a long-term plan.”
Defense Contractors
Aside from politicians, individuals with access to military secrets were another “traditional target” of the honey plot tactic, according to Shen Ming-shih, a research fellow at the Taiwan-based Institute for National Defense and Security Research.
He cited a case of a former U.S. defense contractor in Hawaii who in March 2014 pleaded guilty to passing classified military information to a Chinese woman with whom he developed “a romantic relationship.”
Benjamin Pierce Bishop, a retired Army Lt. Colonel, had a top-secret security clearance as a contractor with U.S. Pacific Command.
In 2012, the then-58-year-old emailed secret information about U.S.-South Korea joint training and planning sessions, according to the guilty plea. The recipient was an unidentified 27-year-old Chinese woman who was doing graduate studies in the United States.
He also admitted to unlawfully keeping classified documents at home, including a U.S. defense planning guide, the military’s positioning in the Asia-Pacific region, and the Pentagon’s China Strategy.
He also retained a photograph of a Chinese naval asset which investigators said was retrieved from classified material at the request of the Chinese woman.
According to an FBI affidavit filed in the case, Bishop and the woman first met in 2011 at an international defense conference in Hawaii. They became friends, then lovers.
The FBI agent wrote that the woman may have been at the conference in order to target individuals like Bishop with access to classified U.S. information.
The DOJ didn’t link the woman to Beijing’s intelligence agency. In September 2014, Bishop was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison.
‘Systematic Intelligence Mechanism’
Shen described honeypots as a “routine and systematic intelligence mechanism of the CCP.”
The sophisticated operation often begins with long-term identification and surveillance of potential targets. Operatives then use social media, community activities, fundraising, and conferences to establish connections, according to Shen.
“At first, they may focus on gathering personal details, identifying vulnerabilities, and mapping social networks, rather than gathering classified information,” Shen told The Epoch Times in a written response on Nov. 10.
“These details lay the groundwork for future lobbying, infiltration, and coercion.”
Those targeted by honey trap efforts recalled a similar pattern.
“They’ve tried to lure me a number of times to write papers on Australia’s opinion about, for example, the Winter Olympics in China,” Paul Johnstone, a former Australian military and law enforcement professional, said in a 2025 interview with The Epoch Times.
“They want these opinion pieces; they want to get an understanding of the Australian government’s thinking—or how people who work in government or have connections to government, how they’re thinking—and they could then use that for policymaking,” he said.
Johnstone said his background in the Australian Defense Force and military intelligence made him the target of several honey trap attempts. The experience prompted him to warn the public to be more cautious about what they share on social media, particularly on dating websites.
“If you got a military background, or police background, or even if you put a photograph of yourself in a uniform … I guarantee you will have a large number of very beautiful women from China and also Hong Kong, in particular [responding],” Johnstone said.
He cautioned that Chinese spies may pose as coming from Hong Kong, as foreigners perceive the former British colony as a safer place than mainland China.
Exploitation of ‘Human Weaknesses’
Experts say it’s hard to guard against honey trap efforts, as they are concealed within seemingly legitimate personal relationships or commercial transactions.
This tactic exploits human weaknesses,” Feng Chongyi, a China expert and an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney, told The Epoch Times on Nov. 10.
Even when U.S. investigators suspect someone of setting a honey trap for the CCP, Feng said, establishing sufficient evidence for prosecution could be difficult.
Unlike the communist regime, democratic governments in the West cannot interfere with private relationships or restrict legitimate commercial activities without a clear legal basis, Feng said.
“It is extremely difficult to guard against such threats,” he said.
Luo Ya, Cathy He, and Frank Fang contributed to this report.
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