China and Russia have deployed attractive women to the United States to seduce unwitting Silicon Valley tech executives as part of a “sex warfare” operation aimed at stealing American technology secrets, according to a report.
Industry insiders told The Times of London that they have been approached by would-be honeypots — some of whom have even managed to ensnare their targets by marrying them and having children.
Chinese and Russian agents are also using social media, startup competitions and venture capital investments to infiltrate the heart of America’s tech industry, the report said.
“I’m getting an enormous number of very sophisticated LinkedIn requests from the same type of attractive young Chinese woman,” James Mulvenon, chief intelligence officer at risk-assessment firm Pamir Consulting, told The Times.
“It really seems to have ramped up recently.”
A former US counterintelligence official who now works for Silicon Valley startups told The Times that he recently investigated one case of a “beautiful” Russian woman who worked at a US-based aerospace company, where she met an American colleague whom she eventually married.
According to the former counterintelligence official, the woman in question attended a modelling academy when she was in her twenties. Afterward, she was enrolled in a “Russian soft-power school” before she fell off the radar for a decade — only to re-emerge in the US as an expert in cryptocurrency.
“But she doesn’t stay in crypto,” the ex-official said. “She is trying to get to the heights of the military-space innovation community. The husband’s totally oblivious.”
The former counterespionage official told The Times that these kinds of scenarios happen more often than people think.
“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,” he said.
“If I wanted to be out of the shadows, I’d write a book on it.”
According to Mulvenon, security turned away two attractive Chinese women who tried to gain entry into a business conference on China investment risks in Virginia last week.
“We didn’t let them in,” he said. “But they had all the information [about the event] and everything else.”
He added: “It is a phenomenon. And I will tell you: it is weird.”
Mulvenon, a counterespionage expert, said that the seduction tactics used by foreign honeypots was a “real vulnerability” for the US “because we, by statute and culture, do not do that.”
“So they have an asymmetric advantage when it comes to sex warfare,” he said.
A senior US counterintelligence official told the publication that America’s enemies have replaced Cold War–era spies with everyday operatives who pose as businesspeople, investors or analysts.
“We’re not chasing a KGB agent in a smoky guesthouse in Germany anymore,” the official said.
“Our adversaries — particularly the Chinese — are using a whole-of-society approach to exploit all aspects of our technology and Western talent.”
The House Committee on Homeland Security has warned that the Chinese Communist Party carried out more than 60 espionage operations inside the US over the past four years, though former officials believe the true number is far higher.
American authorities have repeatedly accused Chinese operatives of targeting cutting-edge industries. In one case, Klaus Pflugbeil, a resident of Ningbo, China, was sentenced last December to two years in prison for trying to sell stolen Tesla trade secrets at a Las Vegas conference.
“In stealing trade secrets from an American electric-vehicle manufacturer to use in his own China-based company, Pflugbeil’s actions stood to benefit the PRC [People’s Republic of China] in a critical industry with national security implications,” said Matthew Olsen, the US assistant attorney general for national security.
The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property estimates that China-linked corporate espionage costs US taxpayers as much as $600 billion a year.
The Post has sought comment from the Russian and Chinese governments.
