A Chinese company has purchased Grindr, the largest homosexual hookup site in America.  The site, with 3.3 million members, features an easy-to-use interface that allows members to solicit sex from strangers.

Think I'm exaggerating?

Unless you're agreeing to meet in a sauna or a hotel (whooooop lucky you – is he famous?!), you're more than likely going to end up in his bedroom, or yours[.] ... And don't bother tidying up – they really don't care.  Just make sure the bed's free of pizza crumbs and at least looks [as if] it might've been changed since the last general election.

Now, why would a Chinese company be interested in purchasing such a website?  China has stolen many U.S. databases for intelligence purposes.  Such an acquisition would add to its database of American citizens.

What use might the Chinese have for a database of homosexual Americans?  Suppose they discover that an important politician has a Grindr account.  If a politician were in the closet because he represents a conservative state – like, say, South Carolina – being outed might hurt his career.  If the Chinese knew which politicians were gay and even had compromising photos or texts, such politicians could be blackmailed.  The same applies to people working in national security posts in the government as well.

China experts and former intelligence officials are raising concerns about user data privacy following the acquisition of Grindr, the world's largest gay dating application, by a Chinese technology firm.  The Chinese government, they say, could be in a position to demand sensitive and embarrassing details on the lives of millions of non-Chinese citizens.

That announcement set off alarms among officials and experts that track Chinese intelligence and foreign influence operations in the United States.  The Chinese government is sweeping up massive amounts of data on not only its own citizens, but also Americans and others, as part of a unique and well[] planned effort to build files on foreigners for intelligence purposes.

"What you can see from Chinese intelligence practices is a clear effort to collect a lot of personal information on a lot of different people, and to build a database of names that's potentially useful either for influence or for intelligence," said Peter Mattis, a former U.S. government intelligence analyst and China fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. 

Exit question: Should closeted Republican politicians conduct their same-sex hookups offline to better protect themselves from blackmail?

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.