The Code-Breakers Who Led the Rise of Computing
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Books & arts doctoral work, published in the Astrophysical Journal, provided tangible evidence of quan- tum behaviour in complex systems. Teaching The code-breakers who students about scientists such as Imes broad- ens their image of who can be a physicist. This is one strategy to transform STEM curricula led the rise of computing and to demonstrate how faculty members can respect the contributions of women and people of colour. In short, students should World wars, cold wars, cyberwars — marking a century see scientists who look like them reflected in classroom content. Researchers such as of state surveillance at GCHQ. By Andrew Robinson Christopher Emdin, a scholar of science edu- cation at Columbia University in New York City, have used this approach to attract students ost professional scientists aim al-Qaeda attacks, to work with his US opposite from historically under-represented groups to be the first to publish their number. into STEM fields. Called culturally relevant findings, because it is through What emerges is that SIGINT has ranged from pedagogy, it merits more detailed discussion “ dissemination that the work highly effective to almost useless. In July 1962, than it gets in this book. realises its value.” So wrote a few months before the Cuban missile crisis, Early in her narrative, Posselt asks a cru- mathematicianM James Ellis in 1987. By contrast, GCHQ picked up enciphered Soviet messages cial question: how much should graduate he went on, “the fullest value of cryptography is suggesting that two Soviet passenger and cargo programmes reform “to accommodate the realised by minimising the information available ships were “possibly en route Cuba” and that diverse career pathways in their fields”? There to potential adversaries.” their voyages might be “other than routine”. are simply not enough tenure-track positions, Ellis, like Alan Turing, and so many of the But there was no hint of the ships’ purpose and and most PhD holders don’t work in academia. driving forces in the development of comput- content. Then, in mid-October, a US U-2 spy STEM fields have been slow to empower grad- ers and the Internet, worked in government plane detected the first proof of Soviet mis- uate students who choose to use their training signals intelligence, or SIGINT. Today, this cov- siles in Cuba, triggering the crisis. Two weeks to improve or uplift their communities. ers COMINT (harvested from communications later, soon after US president John F. Kennedy’s Departments and faculty members need to such as phone calls) and ELINT (from electronic announcement of a naval blockade of Cuba, provide safe spaces for students interested in emissions, such as radar and other electromag- GCHQ detected a flurry of urgent enciphered careers outside academia. Students in Mich- netic radiation). Ellis and Turing are just two of messages sent from Moscow to Soviet ships. igan’s applied-physics programme said they the many code-breakers and code-builders in Thus, SIGINT helped to alert and inform govern- wanted to secure employment and make a dif- Behind the Enigma, the first authorized history ments, but the US political decision depended ference in society. The programme involves of one of the world’s pre-eminent secret intelli- on ground observations by the military. collaborations with many different depart- gence agencies, GCHQ, the United Kingdom’s By contrast, at the end of the Falklands War ments, showing how physics can improve peo- Government Communications Headquarters. against Argentina in 1982, the commander of the ple’s daily lives. This approach can resonate Famous for its Second World War decryption British task force declared that, without GCHQ’s with and empower graduate students from of the German Enigma cipher at Bletchley Park, advance penetration of the Argentine plan of historically under-represented groups. there is so much more to this secrecy-shrouded attack, mainly through COMINT in Spanish, the There are many more successful doctoral outfit, reveals Canadian historian John Ferris. invasion would have failed at sea. But once the programmes than Posselt can cover. For exam- Fielding formidable research, Ferris tells a soldiers landed on the Falkland Islands, SIGINT ple, Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge global tale of mathematics, engineering, data failed them in battle, because of the improvised is the leading producer of African Americans sciences and linguistics in the service of poli- nature of the chain of command. with PhDs in chemistry. The university has tics, diplomacy, war and security. Spanning a Central to these events was UKUSA, or ‘Five succeeded through targeted recruitment, century, it ranges from telegraphic intercepts Eyes’ — which receives frequent mention in the mentoring and support. to malware that can bring down infrastructure. book. This is the still-operative multilateral Equity in Science does a good job of high- After a brief introduction to pre-1914 intelli- agreement for cooperation in SIGINT between lighting some of the barriers and challenges gence based on letters, cables and wireless Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United to equity in graduate programmes, and pro- messages, his story begins with First World War Kingdom and the United States. It was inaugu- vides examples of what some do right and cryptography and the foundation of GCHQ in rated between GCHQ and the US National Secu- wrong. The book supplies specific guidance 1919 as the Government Code & Cypher School. rity Agency in 1946, at the beginning of the cold on inclusive practices. What we need now is It ends with the agency’s current, not-so-secret war, but its existence was concealed from the a companion volume on getting and keeping incarnation as a protector of the cyber com- public until 2005. scientists of colour in the next section of the mons. In September 2001, the director of GCHQ Intriguing are the backgrounds and mindsets pipeline: faculty. As I found after securing that crossed the Atlantic on the only aircraft allowed of past and present GCHQ staff — today 6,000 in PhD, rising through the ranks of academia as into the United States immediately after the number, compared with 10,000 at its wartime a Black woman chemist is tremendously hard peak — and their working conditions, break- work. What kept me going? Inspired by Saint Behind the Enigma: The throughs and varied relationships with peers Elmo Brady’s legacy, I knew I too deserved a Authorised History of in other countries. Of their US counterparts, seat at the table. GCHQ, Britain’s Secret retired GCHQ director David Omand joked to Cyber-Intelligence the BBC in 2013: “We have the brains. They have Agency Sibrina N. Collins is executive director of John Ferris the money. It’s a collaboration that’s worked the Marburger STEM Center at Lawrence Bloomsbury (2020) very well.” Technological University in Southfield, Certainly, GCHQ mathematicians were often Michigan. secretly ahead of the academic game. For exam- e-mail: [email protected] ple, in 1970 Ellis came up with the possibility 492 | Nature | Vol 586 | 22 October 2020 ©2020 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. ©2020 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. SSPL/GETTY Cryptographers at Bletchley Park use a Colossus computer to decrypt German military communications during the Second World War. of “secure non-secret digital encryption”, but Europe’s earliest readable script, Minoan Linear critically. In a discussion of the 2013 leaks could visualize no way to implement it. In 1973, B, an archaic form of Greek. about UKUSA surveillance by National Secu- a younger colleague, Clifford Cocks, later chief Bletchley’s staff was famously more than rity Agency contractor Edward Snowden, which mathematician at GCHQ, realized Ellis’s concept 75% women. Compared with “virulent sex- were followed by a UK government inquiry into by inventing the public-key system now known ism” in the computing industry, Ferris notes GCHQ, Ferris rejects the charge that the agency as the RSA encryption algorithm. Its name of GCHQ in the 1930s that, “once inside, the collects intelligence on everybody, regardless derives from Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leon- standards were those of flair, not gender”. But of their risk to UK security. His unsatisfying ard Adleman, who invented it independently in the stories of notable women from those days take is that their sins are more of omission than 1977 in the United States. are still only now coming to light, as witness the commission. He writes: “GCHQ did not openly In 1974, another GCHQ mathematician, dearth of female portraits in the book’s plate address the operational and legal elements of Malcolm Williamson, devised the technique sections. Staff included linguist Emily Anderson, bulk collection because it did not know how to for public exchange of a common secret key a former professor of German who became a do so, rather than having anything to hide.” between two parties that later became the basis world-leading cryptanalyst in the 1930s, and Today, a secure cage in GCHQ’s basement for all secure transactions on the Internet. This mathematician Joan Clarke, who used Bayes- archives contains the vetting records of each one is also named after US cryptographers — ian statistics to speed decryption at Bletchley, member of staff, collected from interviews with Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman — who dis- where she collaborated with (and was briefly friends and families before hiring. These were covered it independently in 1976. Only in 1997 fiancée of) Turing. These days, the organization unavailable to Ferris. Each record is destroyed were these two crucial GCHQ discoveries declas- — like most in cybersecurity — realizes that it has when the member dies. “Nothing better typi- sified. Even in 2020, writes Ferris, “Siginters feel a sizeable gap to close on gender balance in its fies GCHQ than this focus on privacy for peo- disquiet when they see the name GCHQ in press workforce; Ferris doesn’t dwell on that.