Sexpionage and how foreign spies use intimacy to steal secrets
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What is sexpionage and how is it used by foreign spies?
Sex for secrets. In an age dominated by digital surveillance, human desire remains a vulnerability. Foreign intelligence agencies are still using intimacy as a tool for gathering information. Is there a way to protect national security secrets from sexpionage? Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt.
How do foreign intelligence agencies utilize intimacy for intelligence gathering?
I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, February 26th, 2026. If trained officials with security clearances can be compromised in this way, how safe are our secrets? For more on that, I'm now joined by USA Today World Affairs Correspondent Kim Helmgaard. It's good to speak with you, Kim.
What types of national secrets are targeted through honey traps?
Thanks for having me.
Can we live in an era of spy satellites, facial recognition tools, AI surveillance, and the ability to track billions of personal devices with all that tech? Why is something as old school and low tech as a honey trap still being deployed? And what kinds of national secrets are adversaries trying to gain access to through these relationships?
Yes, you're absolutely correct.
How do honey traps compare to traditional spying methods?
I mean, the kind of mixture of secret and open source intelligence that you mentioned is definitely at the sharp end of intelligence work, I would say. You know, kind of current and former intelligence officers and spy chiefs say that as important as that stuff is you know the satellite stuff the ai stuff the human aspect of this work you know interpreting the data forming relationships on the ground all that is equally important and necessary i think in the sort of public imagination you know spy work is all kind of rooftop chases you know a man or a woman with a gun defeating an entire army But the reality of it is that it's quite processy, slow and bureaucratic. And you do need humans in the mix there to consolidate and interpret data and see where that all can go.
What challenges do intelligence agencies face in tracking sexpionage?
I think the thing to note, you know, we're talking about honey traps. These do represent a relatively niche or small subset of the kind of total spying that countries like China and Russia do. And we don't have a lot of, you know, there's no official statistics or numbers that the intelligence agencies keep all this stuff classified. So we don't know the precise scale of it. In general, what spies who are targeting the U.S.
Are American military personnel vulnerable to sexpionage tactics?
are hoping to do, and this applies especially to China, is they're trying to do what's called technology transfer. And this is essentially where their intelligence officers kind of infiltrate American universities, research centers, think tanks, corporations, and they try to kind of acquire or obtain a mixture of proprietary information and open source information that they then push back to their spy masters in Beijing or wherever they might be located.
Are we talking about American soldiers and officers being duped here, or are these people engaging in transactional sex? Do they know what they're doing, or are some underestimating the security risk?
What measures are taken to protect personnel from becoming targets?
I think it's fair that it kind of runs the gamut. You know, our reporting has surfaced some never before seen examples of failed honeypots. This is where largely where sort of suspected intelligence officers have approached members of the U.S. military and defense contractors to try to lure them into relationships where like over time they could divulge secrets. We've also located examples of the U.S.
Which countries are most active in using sexpionage tactics?
military being duped. This mostly comes to us through court cases and prosecutions. My overall sense is that the U.S. government is well aware of these risks and kind of consistently communicates them to the 18 different intelligence agencies that exist across the space. It's kind of funny. I noticed that on Valentine's Day, that's just come past, the U.S. Army's counterintelligence unit actually published a social media post about this topic. And it kind of essentially said, you know, without putting too fine a point in the matter, that If you're a five and the person that you're interested in is a 10, you may want to reflect seriously on that. So a lot of the kind of the counterintelligence training that's given to, you know, the troops, the officers, the defense contractors, a lot of it is kind of like, don't be naive, don't be adult, in short.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is sexpionage and how is it used by foreign spies?
0:05–0:29
2
How do foreign intelligence agencies utilize intimacy for intelligence gathering?
0:29–0:46
3
What types of national secrets are targeted through honey traps?
0:46–1:13
4
How do honey traps compare to traditional spying methods?
1:13–2:03
5
What challenges do intelligence agencies face in tracking sexpionage?
2:03–2:29
6
Are American military personnel vulnerable to sexpionage tactics?
2:29–3:14
7
What measures are taken to protect personnel from becoming targets?
3:14–3:40
8
Which countries are most active in using sexpionage tactics?
3:40–12:21
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Excerpt
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