During his decades-long career with the CIA, Dennis Wilder spent a lot of time in China.
And whenever he returned to his hotel room in the evenings, he says, the same thing kept happening.
"Almost inevitably, a young lady, very attractive, would step onto the elevator," he says.
"I would press the button for my floor. She would come up with me. And then she'd ask if I wanted her to come to my room."
Wilder, who was a China specialist with the agency and now lectures at Georgetown University, says he never took the obvious bait. But he knows plenty of American men did.
The next morning, they would get a knock on the door. They would be greeted by someone with incriminating photos, warned they had broken the law, and encouraged to "cooperate" — often by sharing sensitive information.
This "honey trap" tactic is a staple of spy novels. But it is also a very real method used by China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), Wilder says.
The intelligence agency's activities are in the spotlight following the resignation of Nvidia chief Jensen Huang amid a swirl of suggestions he had been in a relationship with a suspected MSS asset.
Several former intelligence officers told the ABC the saga had also highlighted the US's haphazard approach to countering Chinese…
