Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s admission this weekend that he had an affair with Alice Huang, a woman suspected of being a Chinese intelligence asset, has drawn fresh attention to a persistent and largely unresolved vulnerability in American national security: the use of personal relationships by foreign governments to gain access, influence or sensitive information.
Alice Huang, who is not related to Jensen Huang, is suspected of using the relationship to try to move banned high-powered processing chips into China for the Chinese Communist Party. Officials say cases like this one are not isolated incidents but part of a recurring pattern used by intelligence services from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea to penetrate American institutions.
A Doctrine Built on Access
Peter Mattis, a former CIA counterintelligence analyst and president of the Jamestown Foundation, says China’s Ministry of State Security operates on a philosophy distinct from simple information theft.
“Intelligence is not about the collection of classified information. Intelligence is about supporting decisions, supporting decision makers and policymakers,” Mattis told The Post, describing a tradition that “celebrates getting inside the adversary’s decision making and shaping what they do.”
That makes the artificial intelligence industry, currently the most competitive and strategically significant sector in American technology, a natural target. Elon Musk alluded to the risk in blunt terms in a social media post about foreign honeytrap operations: “If she’s a 10, you’re an asset.”
A Pattern That Extends Into Politics
The dynamic is not confined to Silicon Valley boardrooms. Former California congressman Eric Swalwell’s once-promising gubernatorial ambitions were undercut earlier this year when it emerged he had had a sexual relationship with Christine Fang, known as “Fang Fang,” a suspected Chinese intelligence operative who had infiltrated his office while under FBI surveillance.
Fang entered the United States on a student visa and, according to FBI reporting, is accused of having seduced two unnamed Midwestern mayors before her relationship with Swalwell. She fled back to China once she realized she was under watch. Swalwell, who also faced separate sexual harassment accusations from other women, was found to have broken no laws.
Other recent cases have involved alleged official misconduct rather than sexual relationships. Linda Sun, a former aide to New York Governors Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul, stood trial on allegations she used her state position to advance Beijing’s interests, including blocking Taiwanese officials from leadership roles and forging signatures; the case ended in a mistrial. Eileen Wang, the 56-year-old mayor of Arcadia, California, resigned days before being charged in May with acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China. She has not yet gone to trial.
Exploiting Relationships That Already Exist
Mattis cautioned that not every person swept into these cases begins as a willing agent — foreign intelligence services frequently look to exploit relationships that already exist. In Huang’s case, which involved a Nvidia chief whose prior employers imported chips but not to China, it remains unclear whether Chinese intelligence identified and exploited an existing relationship or whether Alice Huang’s business contacts were targeted from the start.
“If you trust someone, you talk to them about things that you might not talk about with other people,” Mattis said.
Shared professional ground can make even routine conversation about supply chains, customers or policy seem unremarkable, he noted, while the ultimate aim can be subtler than theft of information. “The mission would be to exploit someone who can shape an executive’s view of things so that they will make particular recommendations,” Mattis said.
The Scale of the Problem
The true scope of foreign infiltration efforts is difficult to measure. In January 2022, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said more than 2,000 open investigations concerned Chinese government efforts to steal American information or technology, with the bureau opening a new China-related counterintelligence case roughly every 12 hours. Those figures track investigations rather than individual spies or specific honeytrap operations.
Mattis described China’s Ministry of State Security as a “vast sprawling apparatus” made up of the central ministry, 34 provincial departments and bureaus, and hundreds of local offices, with an overall workforce he estimated could reach “600,000, 700,000” officers — though he noted most of that force is focused on operations inside China itself.
Partly because of honeytrapping concerns, the Biden administration barred US government officials stationed in China from having sex with Chinese women, a prohibition the Trump administration has kept in place.
From Sophisticated to Brazen
Outside mainland China, tactics used by Chinese and Russian operatives range widely in sophistication. James Mulvenon, chief intelligence officer at risk-assessment firm Pamir Consulting, told The Times last year, “I’m getting an enormous number of very sophisticated LinkedIn requests from the same type of attractive young Chinese woman.”
A former counterespionage official described an even longer-horizon approach in the same report: “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.”
That model has precedent. Ten Russian agents pleaded guilty in 2010 to conspiring to operate unlawfully in the United States, with some using stolen identities to build ordinary-looking lives and relationships, according to the FBI. Russian national Maria Butina later admitted to conspiring to act as an agent of Russia by cultivating politically influential Americans and organizations to open unofficial communication channels; she was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2019.
Community Infiltration and Coercion
Andrew Harding of the Heritage Foundation said foreign adversaries often use existing communities inside the United States as an entry point. “A key way they will conduct espionage is through Chinese-American communities and groups which are sympathetic to the state … this is just the start. Stealing trade secrets and academic research are all part of the Chinese playbook,” Harding told The Post. “It is a whole party effort by the CCP to undermine the American way of life and threaten American innovation and dominance.”
In one documented case, Chinese intelligence officer Yanjun Xu helped lure a GE Aviation employee into delivering a presentation at a Chinese university as part of a scheme to obtain aviation trade secrets. Xu was convicted and sentenced in 2022, then later pardoned by President Biden.
Mattis said those who refuse to cooperate once entangled can face direct threats against themselves or their families. “They’ll say: ‘We’ll harm this person and their family if you don’t cooperate with us,'” he said.
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