From Turing to tomorrow: why industry should be paying attention to HMGCC

HMGCC is a name you'll see everywhere at Cambridge Tech Week this year. We're not just speaking at the event, we're one of its biggest sponsors.

If you have never heard of us before, that might surprise you. We've spent the best part of a century deliberately staying out of the spotlight, even as our engineers built some of the most extraordinary technology in Britain's history.

So why is our secretive government engineering organisation now involved in one of the country's biggest tech gatherings? Because we're looking for people like you.

We are not being shy about the fact we want a piece of Cambridge. But will you want to be part of what we do? HMGCC now has so many opportunities for outside innovators to work with us. 

In this blog I wanted to share with you a little about who we are, where we have come from, and say something about the bigger picture of why we have now transformed the way we work.

‘Secret spy tech centre’ is one term often used by the media to describe HMGCC, usually generously peppered with references to James Bond, mysterious gadgets and a curiosity about the things we cannot say.

When this happens we may wryly smile, and gently roll our eyes. What we actually are is something more serious, and a place of vital importance to the work of government. 

To help you understand us, let’s take a quick look at our history – which also includes one very important person from Cambridge’s alumni, Alan Turing.

HMGCC was founded in 1938 with a crucial task to fulfil; to help maintain secure communications with overseas outposts in the event of war with Germany.

Previously the main method had been to send encrypted, morse code messages over the international public telegraph network, but the risk was that these could be easily intercepted by a hostile country.

Our home at Hanslope Park, Milton Keynes, is not far from Bletchley Park, and our function was also as an important hub for working on secure government communications projects.

A new method was developed, to put in place a private network, sending encrypted messages over a short-wave radio, linking directly to and from overseas premises.

Richard Gambier-Parry was recruited to lead a small communications team, to create this wireless network. This small group provided the service with its first engineering support team, operating using the name ‘His Majesty’s Government Communications Centre’.

Turing worked on one project at Hanslope, alongside engineer Don Bayley. Nicknamed ‘the prof’ and very much a part of working life at ‘the park’, Turing devised a speech encryption device known as Delilah.

This ingenious bit of kit reached the prototype stage and is believed to have been demonstrated to visitors using a recording of Churchill’s voice on a record player. 

Turing was one of the most famous names from Hanslope’s past and a drop in the ocean of brilliance coming from HMGCC.

For 88 years now we have been working on sensitive projects for the government, providing bespoke technologies to enable vital work to be carried out for national security. This could range from surveillance tech to systems which would allow people to communicate securely from remote and sometimes hostile locations. Our work has always been about keeping people safe, and the UK secure.

Nestled behind a fair bit of barbed wire, and security gates, it’s fair to say that, to this day, not many people get to see inside Hanslope Park. 

So I will build you a picture. We are a large campus of buildings, each focused on their own specialisms. Each day they are populated by a staff of some of the world’s best engineers, scientists and technologists – all working on or researching tech innovations for use by government.

We have a power sources centre of excellence, we have specialists in space technology, advanced manufacturing, work in electronic circuits, forensics, textiles work, computer-aided design, reverse engineering, cyber and AI…the list goes on. The breadth of engineering disciplines covered is pretty remarkable. A lot has changed in the last nine decades. From solving World War Two communications problems, the spectrum of engineering we now cover is so much broader and the tech landscape has seen a transformation too.

It's no exaggeration to say that technology today is moving faster than most of us can keep up with. What felt cutting-edge very recently can seem outdated overnight, and that relentless pace is transforming the very ways in which national security and defence must deliver technology. 

Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotech and cyber tools are reshaping the threats we face and our responses to them. And we should not forget that the same innovations that excite us can just as easily be turned against us, giving hostile actors new ways to attack infrastructure, spread disinformation, or exploit vulnerabilities. 

But on the flipside, those same breakthroughs are also giving us extraordinary new capabilities to protect what matters. With smarter threat detection, faster intelligence analysis, more resilient systems - the opportunities are clear. The real challenge isn't choosing between embracing innovation or guarding against it. It's doing both at once, staying agile enough to adapt as fast as the technology itself does.

The way in which we do this is by working better with industry. At HMGCC we have created opportunities, such as our Co-Creation programme, through which companies and academics can make contact with us to find their way into working with national security and defence. This is by responding to our direct, funded challenges, in which we invite applicants to solve tech challenges. This is just one way in for companies either with new technologies, or tech they want to transform for new markets.

At Cambridge Tech Week you will have a chance to come and meet our teams, hear more about what we have to offer and find out more about our brilliant, historic organisation which is now adapting and pivoting to face 21st century tech challenges, embracing the needs of tomorrow’s national security. We look forward to meeting you.

The views expressed in this Sponsor article are the author's own and do not necessarily represent those of Cambridge Tech Week.