Inside Britain's most secret eavesdropping establishment its operatives would not, at first glance, instil fear among their arch adversaries.
Formal it is not. Hawaiian shirts are more typical than a starched shirt or old school tie you might have expected to see in an official government building. The dress code is relaxed to cater for the diverse characters working there: one worker refuses to wear shoes, while another has taken fashion tips from DC Comics – a Superman of the mind, perhaps.
It was one of the more arresting sights during an exclusive visit by The National to the UK’s intelligence headquarters GCHQ, a giant ring-shaped building nicknamed The Doughnut on the outskirts of Cheltenham, a town better known for its annual horse racing festival.
It is where some of Britain’s sharpest minds are fine-tuned to take on adversaries, from enemy states to international criminals, with the evolving threat of artificial intelligence the latest weapon.
“We’re an organisation that is a mix of minds,” says Paul 'Chich' Chichester, director of operations, in a rare interview at the intelligence hub. “You cannot solve the hardest problems without thinking very differently. Plus, you get to work with brilliant minds here, bouncing ideas and having conversations that you would not experience anywhere else."
You have to be "comfortable" in not being as clever as some others "in the room", he says.
The hub for cracking codes and cyphers also welcomes those with neurodiversity, be it dyslexia, ADHD or autism.
Their diversity approach also applies to education. Non-graduates are considered, if they can pass the rigorous aptitude test, and if its annual public Christmas Challenge decoding puzzle is a yardstick, only a few will succeed.
Therefore, you don't need an Oxbridge degree to get in, as many might expect? Absolutely not, answers the man known throughout GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) as “Chich”, whose mind likely holds some of Britain’s most closely guarded secrets.
Graduates of less high-profile universities would equally qualify, he adds.
Shiny and secure
While The Doughnut is a big, shiny building that cannot be missed when either driving down Cheltenham’s main roads or from observers above, its security is extraordinarily strict – so much so that most of it cannot be reported.
Navigation of layered checkpoint systems and access controls is needed to enter, and the use of all electronic devices, including mobile phones, is strictly prohibited: no recording devices for this interview.
While the security officers are genial, they are also extremely vigilant, and everyone entering the site is subject to the strict security controls, with passes double-checked.
If the interior is functionally office-like with inevitable banks of computer and offices, the “hole” of The Doughnut at least provides some respite and perhaps inspiration with its green foliage and benches.
We’re listening
The headquarters’ key role is providing signals intelligence, largely through interception, to the British military and government, alongside allies. But it also defends the country against the growing number of cyber attacks that increased in 2023 from 62 “highly significant incidents” to 89 last year.
The intelligence gathering is done through a series of listening posts around the world.
There is a 24-hour incident centre to report cyberattacks and the “wheels start turning” at GCHQ if the threat is serious.
The heightened security becomes second nature to GCHQ's thousands of employees – the precise number is classified – many of whom dedicate their entire working life to the cause.
They also work closely with MI6, says Chich, as he leans forward on the desk in a small office with a single window. “People here love what they do, they see that it makes a difference and there’s an element that you are contributing to something … a sense of duty.”
Also appealing to the hundreds of bright minds, including many mathematicians, that inhabit The Doughnut is the “cool tech that they cannot play with anywhere else”.
Cyber Iran
What tech his operators use is something he cannot divulge but it is certainly required to keep ahead of the increasing skills of Britain’s adversaries.
While Iran’s cyber capabilities have “matured in a relatively short period of time” and are “good enough to be a threat we take very seriously” its espionage concentrates more on domestic surveillance to protect the regime.
But Iran is also expanding its overseas venture with a recent report by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) – an arm of GCHQ – highlighting that Tehran was “willing to target the UK to fulfil its disruptive and destructive objectives”.
AI forever
That destruction and disruption is set to intensify as the power and reach of AI becomes ever more dominant.
AI is “one of the main threats that is going to change the landscape for us as an organisation”, and the most serious Chich has seen in his 35 years at GCHQ.
Some AI threats cannot yet be known, although some in Silicon Valley put its potential for humanity’s extinction at between 10 per cent and 20 per cent.
That existential moment GCHQ cannot mitigate against – although its brains would likely be foremost in the world in attempting to do so – but it is certainly fighting an increasing number of new battles against AI.
“The threat has grown and every piece of CNI [critical national infrastructure] is under threat,” says Chich. “This is something that the world is waking up to, a significant tool that you can convert to statecraft.”
While ensuring AI cannot help someone make a nuclear bomb through ChatGPT – “although that’s not particularly our remit” – it has many other evolving uses, including spear-phishing emails, that appear from an apparently trusted source to extract personal or financial information. With AI mastering English and other languages, grammatical blunders are eliminated which is “definitely allowing people to do things at scale”, says Chich.
GCHQ also knows that “some of our adversaries are certainly doing their homework” on AI that will produce technological advances that “will definitely change our landscape”.
The key, argues the affable Chich, is to use the mass of neurodivergent minds on hand to “get ahead of the bad guys”, with much intelligence investment in AI, “a technology that will shape the next five or 10 years … or forever”.
Code crackers
That is some distance even from the imaginations of GCHQ’s predecessors who more than a century ago set up the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park, where the German Enigma codes were famously cracked, shortening the Second World War.
GCHQ's early existence was secret but its role in intercepting Soviet warship communications and positions in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis greatly assisted Washington’s intelligence community.
GCHQ, as it became, wasn’t even known by the public until 1976 but a decade ago, with the explosion of social media and smartphones, its secrecy was no longer prudent.
“Today all societies' security is digital, increasing the surface of vulnerability,” says Chich, who with a smile adds: “But then our ability to gain intelligence is much bigger.”
Unit 26165
Another country intent on “disruptive objectives” towards Britain is Russia, especially given the UK’s support for Ukraine.
Moscow’s cyber athletes are not only focused on the war but are continually operating beyond its borders, trying to discover what is being supplied to Kyiv.
This includes, as another NCSC report highlighted, hacking CCTV cameras at the Ukraine border alongside a “campaign of malicious cyber activity against western logistics entities”.
These operations were conducted by “military unit 26165 of Russia’s GRU” – Moscow’s overseas intelligence service - that has conducted cyber campaigns against public and private organisations, including airports and air traffic management systems.
Much of this was done by “credential guessing, spear-phishing and exploitation of Microsoft Exchange mailbox permissions”, the report said.
While there have been major advances in drone warfare, has the Ukraine conflict also increased Moscow’s cyber edge? “History would say most innovation has been done through war,” Chich answers cryptically.
