Female spies are waging 'sex warfare' to steal Silicon Valley secrets

https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/silicon-valley-spy-china-russia-2v03676kl

by nreece • 9 months ago

59 93 9 months ago

nreece• 9 months ago

alganet3• 9 months ago

I already said this before: You're a dirty ass computer nerd, and a beautiful woman approaches you? Definitely a trap. Maybe a spy, maybe a scammer, maybe someone insane.

Same with friendships, all sorts of things. Someone that's super into the same things as you and appears to help you and encourage you like a friend you never had? That's not a friend, guarantee you.

djohnston• 9 months ago

Downvoted by marks XD

reaktivo• 9 months ago

Definitely a trap. Maybe a spy, maybe a scammer, maybe someone insane.

You fail to imagine that someone who threats you like shit can also be any of those things.

alganet3• 9 months ago

Maybe I just didn't mentioned it.

dmpk2k• 9 months ago

Maybe my circle is unusual, but almost none of the programmers I know live down to the popular stereotypes. Most of them are popular, and a third are jacked.

You need to get out more for your own good.

alganet3• 9 months ago

Most programmers are not worth spying on or even scamming. That's fine.

"dirty ass programmer" contrasted with "beautiful woman" is a stereotypical example, but not a rule. It represents an asymmetry in typical social interactions. If you're getting much more than you deserve, it's a trap. Got it?

dingaling• 9 months ago

The State Dept advice for personnel going on foreign assignments used to be quite direct, but pragmatic: "if you're a 4/10 in the USA, you're still a 4/10 abroad".

dgrin91• 9 months ago

I kind of presumed that 'sex warfare' (aka seduction) was a standard aspect of espionage (even though no one openly acknowledges it), so this seems like nothing new

arethuza• 9 months ago

Robert Baer's book "See No Evil" goes into a lot of detail about how espionage actually works:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_No_Evil_(Baer_book)

decimalenough2• 9 months ago

The popular image of seductive spies a la Bond girls is that they target senior government officials, businessmen and diplomats, not pasty IT geeks.

TheOtherHobbes2• 9 months ago

Businessmen and diplomats don't know the API keys.

IAmBroom4• 9 months ago

And the popular image of jewel thieves is that they universally drop down from the ceiling, instead of entering from a cherrypicker truck through a smashed window.

red-iron-pine3• 9 months ago

80% of gub'mnt stuff is in FedRAMP so you hit the IT nerds and have them talk to you all day about how they herd some sort of VM/container solution, and then drop a USB into their laptop while sleeping.

the actual Feds gets training about this but the contractors are made of swiss cheese and have tons of holes.

get on tinder near any military base and the number of attractive women of indeterminate russian/central asian/east asian extraction are far higher than you'd think for places like Yuma or Everett or Oklahoma

IAmBroom4• 9 months ago

And it's traditionally called a "honeypot", not "sex warfare", but that is clearly a clickbait decision.

rapsey3• 9 months ago

A funny thread about this theme: https://x.com/HououinTyouma/status/1978942235413561393

On a serious note. The Chinese will go to great lengths to steal tech that they want. I have heard some interesting stories regarding fake cell towers and phone tapping next to factories and not for some crazy important tech either. Just something the Chinese did not yet know how to do and wanted to compete without spending years of R&D.

trippyballs• 9 months ago

so if i become a cracked engineer there is chance of precipitation.

codyklimdev• 9 months ago

That's the spirit!

hbarka• 9 months ago

This sounds so fantastical and almost nonsense. Marrying and having kids all as a ruse? I smell propaganda or tall tales of weekend Ian Flemings.

ChrisMarshallNY3• 9 months ago

Russia is known for doing exactly that (not a story). Looks like China is borrowing from the same playbook. China has also planted “sleeper” spies, who join companies at a junior level, then rise through the ranks, until they can access real stuff. Wouldn’t surprise me, if the US and Israel have done the same.

America has a bling problem; especially younger folks. It’s our Achilles heel. There are Americans who will sell out our nation for a pittance, just so they can strut around, looking cool.

tessierashpool92• 9 months ago

Maybe I should try the same, join company at junior level, rise through the ranks until finally some Russian and Chinese spies come an seduce me.

pjc502• 9 months ago

America has a bling problem; especially younger folks. It’s our Achilles heel.

And one particular 79 year old.

wahern• 9 months ago

Wouldn’t surprise me, if the US and Israel have done the same.

The US doesn't have the institutions or culture in place to recruit and shepherd people into that kind of espionage. Or any espionage, really. We're notoriously horrible at HUMINT. With the possible exception of a brief period during the Cold War, we've always been hopelessly obsessed with developing and wielding technological solutions, not without some success, to be fair. Why spend $10 million on building a long-term HUMINT espionage program when we can pay Palantir $10 billion to run contractors to steal secrets remotely.

Israel... I dunno. Given the deep cultural and social ties and relatively easy mobility, and the fact most of the US and Israeli defense and information sectors are privatized and diffuse, Israel can probably just rely on poaching people, much like a corporation. By contrast, China's problem until recently has been brain drain. Chinese want to move to the US, China can just leverage that demand and flow of people.

I'm not sure Americans are any more susceptible to bribery than elsewhere. We're a tremendously wealthy country, with median incomes nearly twice those of even some wealthy Western European countries. The problem with recruiting established professionals is that access to highly valuable information is strongly correlated to career success, and career success means you have much more to lose, and thus less incentive to accept bribes, especially given how harsh our sentencing is compared to most of the rest of the world. (I wouldn't be surprised if corporate espionage results in longer prison time here than China, notwithstanding that for the really severe defense-related cases China will quickly put you to death, as shown by the recent CIA asset fiasco.) Most bribery cases seem to be low-level wage employees without much to offer except in exceptional situations, or government or military workers being paid much less than market rate compared to their counterpart in private industry. Elsewhere, the high-profile, high-level cases, most of the time it's not even clear the accusation is well founded.

While the current state of corporate espionage seems much more opaque, looking back at the history of French corporate espionage might be worthwhile. I don't know much about the specifics, but during the 1980s and 1990s France had a notoriously brazen corporate espionage program, much of which has been well documented and researched, so useful for understanding how it works generally.

FooBarBizBazz• 9 months ago

1. Yes re. first paragraph. There are many examples from the nuclear program.

2. No re. second paragraph(?). How many of the recent high profile "leaks" have been driven by money? Most seemed ideological.

That said, when you read stories of people who did perform espionage for money, the dollar amounts are usually embarrassing. "Just do leetcode, bro."

red-iron-pine3• 9 months ago

Israelis -- maybe

the US depends too heavily on technical intelligence and doesn't develop the same human intelligence approaches.

the heavy emphasis on US capitalism also means they tend to lean on bribes, cash or otherwise. both in giving them out, and also falling victim to the same problem.

joquarky3• 9 months ago

It's probably not too difficult either if you're getting paid on top of the salary.

scotty79• 9 months ago

I wouldn't say it's a ruse. More like a government promoted lifestyle that through financial encouragement leads to poaching a valuable employee from another country.

n4r93• 9 months ago

Not quite the same thing but in the UK there have been a number of scandals around undercover police officers infiltrating activist groups, entering into relationships and fathering children with genuine members, then disappearing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_undercover_policing_relatio...

smallnix7• 9 months ago

Good example for the extreme lengths people go to. Yet there is a huge difference in effort of fathering a child vs. pregnancy and delivering a child. Regardless of the parent in either case disappearing afterwards.

RickJWagner• 9 months ago

That’s horrific. The children go through life at a huge disadvantage.

rapsey3• 9 months ago

That is because you live a life of a normal citizen. A life where daily sociatal rules apply. You likely have not seen war, or been involved in organised crime on either side of the law.

kitd• 9 months ago

They are known as sleeper agents - in this case "sleeper" being particularly apposite.

rsynnott3• 9 months ago

There was at least one case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Barsky

But yeah, the idea that it's happening at scale seems somewhat farfetched.

wakawaka282• 9 months ago

Do you think people will marry and have kids for a green card? If so, why is this less likely? I think this happens, along with plain old intimidation of family members back home.

nakamoto_damacy• 9 months ago

except Silicon Valley is not where its at.. i can see it for military contractors and scientists at national labs but not Silicon Valley unless the target is working on quantum computers or true frontier AI (not OpenAI bs lol)

bjourne2• 9 months ago

British tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch.

defrost3• 9 months ago

Err, you might want to at least watch Succession if you can't keep up with the IRL drama.

  In September 2023, News Corp reported that Rupert Murdoch would retire from the board of News Corporation. He would also retire from the board of Fox Corporation and his son Lachlan Murdoch would replace him on both boards. The retirement would take effect in November 2023.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession_of_Rupert_Murdoch

The siblings voting rights in NewsCorp are inactive / on hold or somesuch and Lachlan has his block and his dad's, and there's a slew of detail.

bjourne2• 9 months ago

You're probably right. I trusted Google's summary: "Rupert Murdoch's News Corp owns the British newspaper The Times and its sister paper, The Sunday Times. Both are published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK." which might be incorrect.

rsynnott3• 9 months ago

Unusually for a Murdoch thing, not a tabloid; while I'd be _somewhat_ suspicious of its output, especially its commentary, it's not in the same class as things like The Sun or Fox; closer to WSJ (also Murdoch) in terms of editorial independence/attachment to reality.

sixhobbits• 9 months ago

Reminds me of a scene from Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (great book)

...

"Preparing my report," Lawrence says. "Doesn't do me any good to make observations if I don't send them out."

"Quite right," Margaret says thoughtfully.

This is an excellent time to stoke the chapel's pathetic iron stove. He puts in a few scoops of precious coal, his worksheet, and the page from the one-time pad that he has just used to do the encryption. "Should warm up now," he says.

"Oh, lovely," Margaret says, "I'm all shivery."

Lawrence recognizes this as his cue to initiate a rescue operation. About fifteen seconds later, he is up there in the hammock with Margaret. To the great surprise of neither one of them, the quarters are awkward and tight. There is some flopping around which ends with Lawrence on his back and Margaret on top of him, her thigh between his.

She is shocked to discover that he has an erection. Ashamed, apparently, that she did not anticipate his need. "You poor dear!" she exclaims. "Of course! How could I have been so dense! You must have been so lonely here." She kisses his cheek, which is nice since he is too stunned to move. "A brave warrior deserves all the support we civilians can possibly give him," she says, reaching down with one hand to open his fly.

Then she pulls the grey wool over her head and burrows to a new position. Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse is stunned by what happens next. He gazes up at the ceiling of the chapel through half-closed eyes and thanks God for having sent him what is obviously a German spy and an angel of mercy rolled into one adorable package.

When it's finished, he opens his eyes again and takes a deep breath of cold Atlantic air. He is seeing everything around him with newfound clarity. Clearly, Margaret is going to do wonders for his productivity on the cryptological front--if he can only keep her coming back.

fxtentacle2• 9 months ago

People seem to forget just how rural the Chinese countryside is. Just showing up as a western-looking guy in the right club in Singapore is enough to get marriage offers. I don’t think there’s any evil plan, just some truly desperate women trying to escape their future.

decimalenough2• 9 months ago

I presume you are aware of this, but for those who may not be, Singapore is both not China and the polar opposite of rural Chinese countryside. It does, however, have numerous sketchy nightclubs staffed with prostitutes from rural China (and Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam etc) who would dearly love to have a personal ATM.

Also, the reason Singapore doesn't have Bangkok's sexpot image is that these clubs are waaaaaay more expensive, squarely targeted at Chinese speakers (although there is an equivalent Indian scene) and whiteys are a rare sight.

https://www.ricemedia.co/the-secret-business-of-thai-disco-a...

em500• 9 months ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but what does the rural Chinese countryside have to do with clubs in Singapore?

blitzar• 9 months ago

Americans get confused easily.

glimshe2• 9 months ago

I suppose it isn't super easy for these women to find Westerners in rural China. Thus, they leave China in look of a future, going to places in Asia where meeting wealthy men is more likely (such as in Singapore).

delta_p_delta_x• 9 months ago

Singapore is an increasingly attractive place for mainland Chinese people to park their money, or attempt to make their fortunes, given the ambivalent-to-hostile attitudes to the PRC in the rest of the world.

Since COVID, Singapore's retail scene has been almost entirely overtaken by Chinese chains. Coffee chains like Luckin Coffee, Chagee, and more are sprouting up everywhere, including in the heartlands. Ma la hotpot/stir fry outlets follow, and then there are the Chinese bubble tea chains like Mixue.

The underbelly is also entirely of mainland Chinese stock. Sex workers, masseuses, and KTV hostesses in Singapore are majority mainland Chinese, who collect tens of thousands a day from men who patronise these establishments.

fxtentacle2• 9 months ago

Singapore is the closest melting pot that is both easy to reach for Chinese tourists and contains enough rich guys to make the trip worthwhile.

rubansk• 9 months ago

I’m singaporean and have never heard about “marriage offers” in clubs being a thing. Maybe I’m going to the wrong ones.

nabla9• 9 months ago

I'm sure spies also operate on platforms like OnlyFans and can extract secrets even without physical interaction.

The number of lonely male tech workers who engage in parasocial relationships online is not insignificant. Twenty years ago, I never would have believed that people would pay money just for some written or verbal acknowledgment from someone on the internet. Attractive female whom men "support" for an illusory relationship can milk thousands from some people.

Getting security clearances after background check shows payments of this type is probably difficult.

smallnix7• 9 months ago

Attractive female whom men

What is it on the Internet with calling women 'females'? I'd understand if you had written 'males' and 'females' OR 'men' and 'women'. This indicates an attempt at objectification to me.

ttoinou• 9 months ago

Isnt objectification required to make the point here? We’re talking about spies

rich_sasha• 9 months ago

In fairness OP also refers to men as "males". Then later "men".

I don't have a view one way or another but maybe this time it isn't about women.

lapsis_beeftech• 9 months ago

Male and female are preferred terms because they are objective and emotionally neutral while avoiding the sexism of misusing the word "man" to mean male human.

surgical_fire2• 9 months ago

Many people speaking in English are not native speakers, even when they communicate fluently - such as yours truly.

I use "Males" or "Men", and "Females" or "Women" interchangeably. This is the first time I see anyone indicating there is a connotation for objectification there.

palmotea• 9 months ago

What is it on the Internet with calling women 'females'? I'd understand if you had written 'males' and 'females' OR 'men' and 'women'. This indicates an attempt at objectification to me.

It's probably the new concept of treating "gender" as distinct from sex, and the attempt to claim terms like "man" and "woman" and make them ambiguous with regards to sex. So some people who want to be specific increasingly use sex terms like "male" and "female" instead.

joquarky3• 9 months ago

I just assume they're Ferengi.

Simulacra• 9 months ago

What's worse or maybe even more sad, is that these accounts hire people, sometimes men and women, to pretend and interact with "fans". The one paying the money is not even talking to the actual person, and I think this is happening to both men and women, there's a lot of lonely people on both sides out there

wakawaka282• 9 months ago

Getting security clearances after background check shows payments of this type is probably difficult.

I don't think so. Ordinary background checks do not get into details of your spending, unless your spending indicates a clear dysfunction or financially compromised state. If they had to block any man who ever gave too much money to a woman he shouldn't have, it would probably rule out half of the men out there. In the best case you could find out from the guy's family or friends that he is a sucker and makes terrible decisions, but I doubt these guys consistently tell anybody what they are doing.

defrost3• 9 months ago

What, no honeytrap catamites?

The Peter Thiel's of SV are presumed immune from sexpionage by The Times?

IAmBroom4• 9 months ago

Yes. It's clickbait, and poorly researched - if at all.

Also, a gold star for inserting the obscure word "catamite" into the discussion!

defrost3• 9 months ago

I've always been fond of the first sentence of Earthly Powers.

MrThoughtful• 9 months ago

Apart from the "warfare" aspect, it is an interesting question whether the combination of "The man is attractive because of money" and "The woman is attractive because of her looks" can work.

When I look at instances in my social circle, it seems like it doesn't really work. The relationships typically seem to suffer from a lack of mutual interests. The woman's beauty quickly dwindles as time passes. And the woman feels like she is missing out on a "real life" because all she does is be at the side of the man, instead of building her own career. The attraction of the man seems to dwindle quickly too. I know a few such couples, where the man told me that their sex life is dead, even though he wished it were different.

What that tells me is that to work on your attractiveness, working on your career is not the way to go.

fakedang• 9 months ago

In my circle, I've seen it work, not in the same way though. Attractive women often go after the wealthiest men they can get. Likewise the minute a man goes out of a job, the strain in the marriage becomes immediate in a dual income household; less likely in households where the man was the sole breadwinner. The greater the difference in incomes and/or wealth, the more likely the marriage is going to last. And no, these aren't observations from some theocratic shithole in the Middle East or some ultra conservative Asian circles. These are from all the most liberal cities in the world.

IAmBroom4• 9 months ago

And there is data to suggest children of high earners tend to be more attractive, for just this reason.

A woman who is a 9 out of 10, but not inclined or able to make her own high-earning career, can jump to the head of the income line by marrying a wealthy man. No one is surprised by this, but there are certainly some genetic consequences.

Of course, children of high-income families have better access to dental care, pimple medicine, and so forth, in the US.

satisfice2• 9 months ago

Many people have no interest at all in building a career. (Of the four adults who live in my home, only I want to participate in the economy.) Lots of people, including, I bet, the majority of sober-minded women. Want security and emotional support.

The match-up of pretty female and ambitious and successful male can and has worked through all of history. Yes beauty fades, which is why there better be other layers of connection, but that doesn’t have to be shared interests. I share very little interests in common with my wife of 34 years. We don’t connect in that way. We connect on the level of mutual respect, mutual need, and mutual service.

Our society has become so disconnected from concepts like “respect” and “service.” We are amusing ourselves to death, as the saying goes. But these things work. They are timeless.

glimshe2• 9 months ago

My wife hates videogames, retrogaming, electronics and history videos on YouTube.

Yet, we spend 1 hour hanging out in the morning every single day while we drink together the coffee I make in a $25 drip coffee machine.

Secret of a long marriage! 20 years going strong.

wosined• 9 months ago

I mean, if that's the only option...

stevenwilkin• 9 months ago

https://archive.ph/o7Yp2

fullofbees• 9 months ago

I like that there's three examples. Two named, who are both men and then one woman who is mentioned by an anonymous source and if she's real, doesn't sound that unlike (at least in moral terms) to the crypto evangelist archetype.

atleastoptimal• 9 months ago

The only hard evidence (besides the story about the Russian woman marrying the guy in Aerospace) this article offers is some guy getting a few LinkedIn requests, and two Chinese women trying to get into a conference. There is nothing specific about Chinese/Russian spies seducing normal silicon valley tech workers or marrying them for trade secrets.

rapsey3• 9 months ago

Also female chinese spies stealing tech secrets is a running joke in SV.

qwery• 9 months ago

When a news article has an outrageous headline it's usually not worth reading.

This article jumps right in the deep end, quoting a Silicon Valley insider:

I’m getting an enormous number of very sophisticated LinkedIn requests from the same type of attractive young Chinese woman,

Now on the first read you might think "is that it?" -- is this seriously what the article is about? But the same insider also said:

It really seems to have ramped up recently.

So yeah, like I said.

lostmsu• 9 months ago

To be fair the amount of that kind of spam over Telegram increased for me over the last year from non-existent to bi-weekly or so.

freefaler• 9 months ago

https://archive.is/NwtHM

Female spies are waging 'sex warfare' to steal Silicon Valley secrets

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