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Notes -
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang caught having affair with Chinese spy.
There was some discussion of this in the Sunday thread, but I think this is a big deal worth a top-level post.
The woman, Alice Huang (no relation), is an executive at Singapore-based cloud computing company Megaspeed. The official story from Nvidia, up until last week, was that this was a totally normal nothing-to-see-here business relationship with a client. Jensen himself now seems to admit this is not the case.
Jensen has been strongly opposed to chip export controls for some time. No doubt prosaic conserns about margins and market expansion were a major factor, but now we have to wonder how much corruption, blackmail, and CCP blackops might have played a role. There have been rumors of... irregularities regarding some Nvidia chip shipments to Asia. There is new reporting today that Nvidia itself intervened to squash a Commerce Department investigation into Megaspeed.
I feel like the board has to fire him after this, but on the other hand it seems almost unthinkable. Imagine Apple firing Steve Jobs. There might be pressure from investors to keep him on. It will be interesting to see how the National Security apparatus responds to such a massive persistant vulnerability if it comes to that.
So, I'm mostly just seeing a lot of jokes and memes about this. Which, understandable, it's a juicy scandal.
But one semi serious response that I saw on Twitter got me thinking. Is this just an inherent weakness in all men? An unpatchable security flaw? We're already vulnerable to just normal human temptation. What are we supposed to do when foreign governments target us with professional seductresses? Should all men in critical positions get castrated for national security?
First, some people actually treat their marriage vows seriously. More than you'd think actually and any billionaire can easily divorce their wife and find a model to shack up with.
Second Hot lady spies are actually harder to produce than you think otherwise this would be more common. You need someone who can plausibly be introduced to the target, is hot enough to make them forget themselves and seduce them, is controlled/smart enough to get useful information and the hardest part actually agrees to do all this most stunning women have better things to do than be spys/hookers.
America supposedly stopped honeypotting with their spies for a few reasons:
and related to @MayorofOysterville s point
Conversely, Stasi and KGB had more success with honeypots because of the inverse. As a side effect of centrally planned economy, intelligence service work was one the high prestige occupation with great benefits in the country (rank, remuneration, housing, access to high-end party stores) and ability to travel (buy Western items that were rare due to central planning). Political indoctrination perhaps helped, but it was one of the materially better things to do.
I don't know how modern China compares.
Granted, my understanding is that honeypots were secondary. Most infamous intelligence coups were due to personal ideological motivation (Kim Philby, Rosenbergs), money (Ames, Hanssen), personal workplace grudges (surprisingly many of the Soviet defectors) or combinations thereof (Stig Bergling).
I think this might be counterproductive. I think maybe a 7/10 can fly under the radar, but is still cute enough to get a guy's attention. Then have her do an emotional spearfishing of the target with the equivalent of a psychologist with the target's psychological profile on their lap speaking into their earpiece. She can be whatever the target needs; smart enough to listen to and understand his work, or be comforting while his wife ignores him, show possible acceptance of their fetish etc.
I think that's how we see a lot of these chinese honeypots come through with cute looks rather than stunning looks that would just draw attention ('why are you working in engineering again?'). For the 'hard mode' ones anyway. Pretty easy to drop a superhot escort in at someone's hotel bar and wire up their hotel room.
Apparently the French, Russians, Chinese and practically anyone not from the Western sphere are still running them. The French are doing it... well probably because they're French.
"Mademoiselle, we would like you to sleep with a foreign politician."
"Already on it! On y va!"
"And listen to him talk about his work."
"Je suis obligée?"
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