“Sexpionage,” or sex-espionage, describes the intertwining of two things that have probably gone together for as long as somebody wanted information about something from somebody else. Seduction in the pursuit of secrets exploits the intimacy of sex and the sometimes irrational depths of desire: is it any wonder that it’s a tactic in the great game of spycraft?
“Loose lips sink ships” and “Keep mum, she’s not so dumb” sloganeered Allied propaganda on the home front of the Second World War. But it was the Cold War, particularly in its retellings in novels, film, and television, that made “honey-trapping” and “honeypots” familiar phrases. More contemporary espionage dramas like Slow Horses and The Agency show that it is still a staple of the genre.
Honeypots use their sexual allure to gather information, recruit assets, and set up blackmail stings. Honeypots can be any gender: during the Cold War, the Soviets called female honeypots “sparrows” and male ones “ravens.”
Such tactics didn’t end with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
National security analyst Troy Smith writes that in the twenty-first century, “sexual honeypots that rely on intimate deception for intelligence gathering give rise to profound ethical dilemmas.”
“The violation of privacy, infringement on consent, and psychological harm inflicted raise concerns about the violation of fundamental human rights and dignity. However, consequentialist arguments appeal to the greater public good and security benefits derived from obtaining access to crucial intelligence through such means.”
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US Army lawyers/colonels David Wallace and Mark Visage note that “honeypot” has also entered the lexicon of cyber war. Only instead of a seductive agent, this kind of honeypot is “a physical or virtual environment designed to lure the attention of intruders with the aim of deceiving the intruders about the nature of the environment.” In other words, it’s a decoy computer system. The hacking of such a system potentially allows its designers to “gather counter-intelligence about the intruders’ intent, identity, and means and methods of cyber operations.” The honey-trapping here is all about the bytes.
“Additionally, the honeypots are weaponized. Destructive malware is incorporated into the honeypots and, upon activation, will cause significant damage to an intruder’s own cyber infrastructure.”
Wallace and Visage state that “the legal issues associated with the use of weaponized honeypots under international law are complex, multi-faceted, and unsettled.”
Scholar Alan Cunningham explains that the CIA made porn films to entrap Indonesian President Sukarno before his overthrow in the mass-murder coup of 1967. The Soviets, meanwhile, tried using agents disguised as airline stewardesses to lure Sukarno, a leading voice in the Non-Aligned Movement, to their side. Both these efforts “failed because Sukarno never made attempts to hide his sexual appetite nor did the Indonesian populace much care.”
Cunningham argues that SEXINT (sexual intelligence), or the monitoring of a target’s internet sex usage, and deepfake porn could and should be used against terrorists at home and abroad. He argues that by their nature, fundamentalists (Christian or Islamist) are particularly vulnerable to exposure, discrediting, and blackmail because of their rigid stated views on sex.
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“Porn (and sex in general) is a fantastic tool for destabilizing these criminal, foreign, and domestic terrorist organizations if utilized correctly and properly, with an educated, sensitive, and clearly defined implementation.”
Ah, there’s the rub: what is an “educated, sensitive and clearly defined implementation” of what is essentially a smear?
Speaking of smears, was Mata Hari really Mata Hari? Margaretha Zelle MacLeod’s stage name came to signify the epitome of the seductive female spy after she was executed by the French in 1917. But, as Britannica tactfully puts it, “the nature and extent of her espionage activities remain uncertain, and her guilt widely contested.”
