JUST SPAMMING | Spy Stories Come With Flesh Stuck to Them
Actually, no one outside the counter-espionage system knows exactly what role Alice Huang was playing in the realm of computer chip making though it is anybody’s guess as to what she might have been doing with her boyfriend, the famous chip-maker.
Though sleaze stories keep the world going, the latest one that is rocking the world is of a different kind. Of course it has the regular ingredients that make any scandal: Illicit relationship, financial irregularities, betrayal and intrigue. But what adds a bit of glamour to it is the ‘woman spy,’ a term that has been throwing up myriad sexual images and engendering a plethora of narratives all through history. Though in cinema the most famous spy answering the code 007 is said to be the most glamorous of them all with his women remaining in the sidelights, in the real world of espionage, legendary women spies like Mata Hari and Noor Inayat Khan have carved a niche for themselves.
Pitted against them all, Alice Huang sparkles brighter in the shadowy world because she is now identified as a ‘Chinese spy’ though she served a Singapore based tech company, Megaspeed International, as managing director, and was doing business with Nvidia, the company in the forefront of the AI revolution in the world and started by Jensen Huang. The identification of Alice Huang as a Chinese spy came in the process of defaming Nvidia founder Jensen Huang. Actually Jensen Huang seems to be a man known for his liaisons with many women. But since Alice Huang was branded a spy deployed by the Chinese, Jensen Huang had to step down.
Actually, no one outside the counter-espionage system knows exactly what role Alice Huang was playing in the realm of computer chip making though it is anybody’s guess as to what she might have been doing with her boyfriend, the famous chip-maker. But every story on the relationship between the Huangs, who are not related otherwise, that now comes out in the media and gets circulated is now followed keenly the world over just because the romantic affair now has a woman spy riding in the middle of it. That is why it reminds one of the infamous 1994 ISRO spy scandal. When the story broke out – a Malayalam newspaper played a role in sensationalizing the episode with the lies dished by the police – the entire media establishment went gaga over it.
The story that was told to the people – of course all newspapers in that era before 24-hour news channels and internet did a thorough job in covering the espionage case relying purely on the police inputs and individual imagination – was that two women spies from Maldives gathered information from ISRO scientists, mainly aerospace engineer Nambi Narayanan, who then headed the cryogenic project, by charming them. It was then projected as a honey trap for which the scientists in Thiruvananthapuram fell for and traded classified scientific secrets relating to space research, much to the detriment of the nation’s security.
But as it turned out later on, in 1996, there was no case of espionage in the entire case, proving the popular trope, unfolding during the probe by the Kerala Police and CBI that the nation was watching with bated breath, that it was a local prostitution case blown up into a spy scandal. A police official snubbed by one of the two women from Maldives, who was overstaying in India after the expiry of her visa, implicated them in a false case when his advances were spurned. So the narrative was garnished with loads of piping hot espionage.
Probably the helpless women were into small time flesh trade to eke out a living. But when a police man found that they would not be available free of cost for him, he saw in her a modern day Mata Hari with the prowess to charm space scientists that no one else knew about. Of course a country like Maldives could never afford to have a spy network and employ women to gather information from scientists. But nobody thought about it or questioned about it then – those who doubted were told that the information was passed on to some other country, say Pakistan or the US, which has a full-fledged space research programme. Whatever, the people in Kerala and the whole of India were made to believe that the scientists of ISRO were honey trapped into parting vital information relating to vital research on India’s space programme, particularly the development of cryogenic engines.
The print media that fell lock stock and barrel for the narrative went one step ahead in defaming those accused by the police. A newspaper even carried a story on how Mariyam Rasheeda, the main spy, lost her virginity as a child. Every personal story of the women, the other one was Fausia Hassan, portrayed them lasciviously as seductresses. Because some policemen wanted to teach a lesson to the Maldivian women who were overstaying in the country (and probably indulging in the sex trade) for not obliging them. So they trumped up the charge of espionage, which sold well in the media mainly because the ‘alleged spies’ were women.
Though the fake story ruined the lives of many, it is not clear how many of them were compensated for the loss. Even the compensation ordered by the court and the National Human Right Commission for Nambi Narayanan would not make up for the loss of reputation and the mental agony he underwent. But the police officials, the real authors of the fake spy story, were reportedly protected by the system.