Secret services

Dangerous Liaisons: When Leaders and Entrepreneurs Fall in Love with Spies

Huang’s relationship with the alleged Chinese informant brings to mind the old Soviet ‘honey traps’

9 November 2026

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Jensen Huang, ceo di Nvidia: secondo Cia e Fbi, la sua amante Alice Wang è una spia della Repubblica popolare cinese

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Key points

In the beginning was Cardinal Mazarin
From Admiral Nelson to Mata Hari
Kennedy and the Profumo affair
Once upon a time, there was the ‘Honey Trap’
Epstein’s network and his links with Israel

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

In the end he admitted it: Jensen Huang, the highly influential CEO of Nvidia, a California-based semiconductor giant and a key player in the billion-dollar artificial intelligence revolution, had a relationship with the almost-namesake executive of the Chinese company Megaspeed, Alice Huang, who – at least according to US intelligence – is a Chinese secret agent.

Whether or not he is a spy, only investigations by the CIA and the FBI will be able to determine this. Or so one hopes: history teaches us, in fact, that cases such as this do not always end with a clear-cut conclusion, like a novel by Ken Follett. On the other hand, history is particularly rich in stories like this: there are countless instances in which ‘those in power’ – whether political and/or economic – have found themselves ‘in bed’ with the spy.

In the beginning was Cardinal Mazarin

It is said, for example, that in France in the 17th century, an unconventional Sicilian – who served as prime minister to two different Louis (XIII and XIV) – would send his attractive nieces around the major European courts to seduce men, extract secrets and forge alliances – a rather uninhibited approach to geopolitics. And to think that he was also a high-ranking prelate: we are, in fact, talking about Cardinal Giulio Mazzarino and his seven ‘mazzarinettes’, whose marriages of convenience made history.

From Admiral Nelson to Mata Hari

It would appear, however, that Emma Hamilton, the mistress of Admiral Horatio Nelson, was deeply involved in the British diplomatic networks in the Kingdom of Naples at the end of the 18th century. Several historians therefore attribute to her a role as an informant at the Bourbon court, providing details of the precise movements of the ships that were one day to rout Napoleon.

Most people will also remember Mata Hari, born Margaretha Zelle, a Dutch dancer who, during the First World War, had affairs with numerous French, German and other foreign officers. The historical debate remains open as to the true effectiveness of her espionage, but her name has become synonymous with the ‘seductive spy’. This is partly thanks to the 1931 film of the same name starring the divine Greta Garbo.

Kennedy and the Profumo Affair

The relationship in the 1940s between John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the future President of the United States, and the Danish journalist Inga Arvad – who was under special surveillance by the FBI on suspicion of having links to German intelligence circles and the Nazi regime – was shrouded in mystery. It was never proven that the woman was in fact a spy, but the affair caused no small amount of alarm within the US Navy and the American intelligence services, who feared leaks of classified information across the border.

The most famous sex-scandal spy story of all time, however, is undoubtedly the Profumo affair, named after the British Minister of War John Profumo, who in 1963 had a liaison with the model Christine Keeler, who was also seeing Yevgeny Ivanov, an officer in the GRU, the Soviet Union’s military intelligence service. The scandal led to Profumo’s resignation and contributed to the crisis within Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government in October of that year. This, too, was turned into a film: Scandal by Michael Caton-Jones (1989).

Once upon a time, there was the ‘Honey Trap’

During the Cold War, on the other hand, stories of this kind were commonplace. The Stasi, the political police of the German Democratic Republic, developed, for example, the ‘Romeo Operation’ strategy, in which male agents seduced secretaries, female officials and staff working for West German ministers in order to obtain confidential documents. Some of the women involved had such strong and lasting relationships with their partners from behind the Berlin Wall that they never even suspected who they were dealing with.

It was all part of a well-defined strategy among the heirs of the October Revolution. It is said that the KGB manual even distinguished between ‘Swallows’ (swallows), that is, female agents employed to compromise male targets, and ‘Ravens» (ravens), male agents deployed against female targets. And so, even in the United States, leading and second-tier political and industrial figures found themselves ensnared in the ‘honey traps’ devised by the communist apparatus from behind the Iron Curtain.

And that’s not all: in the 1970s, in fact, the Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was romantically linked to various women who were under surveillance by Western intelligence agencies. Some declassified files have fuelled speculation about links with individuals close to Cuban intelligence, but the accounts remain controversial and inconclusive.

Epstein’s network and links to Israel

And so we come to the present day and to Epstein case: some claim, in fact, that the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell – with whom he organised sex parties for VIPs – had links with Israeli intelligence agencies. No definitive evidence has emerged, but the issue has taken centre stage because the network built by Epstein included businesspeople, politicians, celebrities and royalty from all over the world. And this brings us back to our initial point: with cases like these, it is never easy to write the word ‘end’.