China’s ‘super embassy’ proposal in London sparks spying fears
Fibre optic cables running near the Royal Mint Court site could make it ‘very easy’ for hostile actors to intercept communications, says an Northeastern associate professor in engineering.
LONDON — The “Say no to the embassy” stickers are easy to spot on street lampposts all over the Tower Hill area of London.
The embassy in question is a proposal the Chinese government has submitted to build what is being dubbed a “super” embassy on the site of the Royal Mint Court, which was built 200 years ago to produce new British coins. If approved, the embassy’s 20,000 square meters would reportedly make it the largest national diplomatic headquarters in Europe.
Residents are concerned that the area, next to the Tower of London and overlooking Tower Bridge, will become a focal point for protests. Hawkish politicians and Western allies, including the United States, have voiced espionage concerns.
In a tunnel running under the former Royal Mint building are fiber optic cables carrying sensitive data to London’s two financial centers, the City of London and Canary Wharf. The process for minting coins was moved from the Royal Mint building in the 1980s.
Sophia Economides, an associate professor in engineering on Northeastern’s London campus, says interfering with fiber optic cables can be “very simple.”
“From a technical point, fiber optic cable tapping is feasible but requires physical access to the cables,” says Economides, who has a background in telecommunications and microwave optoelectronics.
“This is what makes the proposed embassy site’s proximity to telecoms infrastructure significant from a security perspective.”
There are ways to detect interference, and safety measures would likely be in place but, she says, “physical access to the fiber optics, which is what is the fear in this case, means that it will be very easy to intercept communications.”
Physical inspections — something potentially made more difficult due to embassy land having diplomatic immunity — and monitoring programs can alert providers to cable hacking but there is still a risk from the most sophisticated hostile actors, says Economides. “Most modern systems have built-in intrusion detection, but advanced tapping methods may bypass it.”
The information traveling through the cables will be encrypted, Economides explains, giving that data an extra level of security. But she says that even strong encryption techniques may not always be totally resilient against spying activity.
“Even very strong encryption doesn’t eliminate all vulnerabilities of the system,” she continues. “Right now, encryption is the only defense against data interception we have, but there is constant advancement of the topic through research — some of it from China.
“Additionally, even without decrypting the signals, one can gain useful information from traffic analysis and metadata. This is similar to how hacking phones can be useful even if you don’t know what was discussed. It is also possible to carry out more effective cybersecurity attacks using this information.”
Editor’s Picks
China bought Royal Mint Court for £255 million ($345 million) in 2018. Its application to turn the location into a new embassy, replacing its current U.K. diplomatic operation in west London, was rejected by the local council two years ago.
But after Chinese President Xi Jinping personally lobbied British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on the matter, officials stepped in and decided to take the final say away from local decision-makers.
The U.K. government has given itself until Oct. 21 — an extension to its original Sept. 9 deadline — to rule on whether to give China the green light.
One of the issues with the planning submission is that it contains a number of redactions that Chinese officials argue are for “security reasons.” Anti-embassy campaigners say there is a risk these rooms could be used to detain and interrogate Chinese dissidents. U.K. ministers have asked Beijing to declare what the blacked-out rooms will be used for.
The mere fact that senior British lawmakers are considering the “super” embassy being built next to major London landmarks is being read as a sign that the Labour administration is looking to warm up Anglo-Chinese relations, after years of being in a deep freeze due to security concerns.
Josephine Harmon, assistant professor in political science, says this trend of looking to open the door to Chinese investment, with its population of 1.4 billion people, is not exclusive to Britain.
Both the U.K. and European Union are now in the middle of a balancing act when it comes to China and the United States, the London-based academic argues.
London and Brussels are “quite keen on consolidating trade ties with the Chinese,” Harmons says, but the U.S. is more hawkish in its dealings with China and is “not on board with that agenda.”
Leaders in Europe, she continues, have been attempting to “have one’s cake and eat it” by tapping into China’s economic growth — Beijing’s GDP grew by 5% last year — as they look to kickstart their own ailing economies. But at the same time, they are trying to keep Washington, which has fears about the impact China’s political and economic rise will have on global security, placated.
“There is this question of, can you do the two at the same time?” says Harmon. “I think the view from the current U.S. administration is you can’t. America is saying, ‘You have to pick one side or the other.’”