The Long History of Sexpionage

Sexpionage—using seduction to extract secrets—has likely been part of espionage as long as spies have existed. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union systematized the approach, calling female operatives 'sparrows' and male ones 'ravens,' deploying them to gather intelligence and set up blackmail operations. As JSTOR Daily reports, modern security analysts have raised serious ethical concerns: the violation of privacy, the absence of real consent, and psychological harm to targets. The concept has also migrated into cyber warfare, where a honeypot is now a decoy system designed to trick hackers and reveal their methods. The mythology around famous female spies, though, gets complicated: Mata Hari, executed by France in nineteen seventeen, may not have been the operative history remembers—historians remain divided on whether she was actually a significant espionage asset at all.

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