The British political class has rediscovered its favorite pastime: shrieking at shadows while the house burns down. The latest target of their performative palpitations is China’s proposed “mega-embassy” near the Tower of London. It is a delicious irony, really—the prospect of building a monolith of authoritarian surveillance right next to a historic monument to monarchical executions. One can almost hear the ghosts of Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell whispering from the ramparts, “Really? That is what is worrying you now?”

On one side of this tedious theater, we have the politicians. These are the same individuals who couldn’t secure a digital border if the password were tattooed on their foreheads, yet they have suddenly morphed into experts in geopolitical architecture. They stand before microphones, puffing their chests and warning us about the “looming threat” of a large building. It is as if they believe the very stones will sprout ears and the gargoyles will start filing intelligence reports directly to Beijing. Their concern is, of course, entirely for show. It is much easier to rail against a physical structure than to address the fact that the entire British economy is essentially three hedge funds in a trench coat, desperately clinging to foreign capital while the infrastructure rots. They hate the building because it’s a visible reminder of their own irrelevance in a world where power is measured in server racks, not ceremonial maces.

But then we have the “intelligence community”—that nebulous collection of state-sponsored voyeurs who spend their days pretending the world is a John le Carré novel when it is actually more like a poorly managed IT department. MI5, it turns out, isn't breaking out in hives over the prospect of a Chinese super-structure. In fact, they are practically salivating at the efficiency of it. They have spent decades playing a game of whack-a-mole across seven different Chinese diplomatic sites scattered throughout London. For a bureaucrat, seven sites means seven different commute routes, seven different parking headaches, and seven different ways for things to get complicated. A “mega-embassy” is simply the Costco-fication of counter-intelligence. Why travel to the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker when you can find all your suspects under one giant, oppressive roof? It is not about national security; it is about the convenience of the surveillance state. They want a one-stop shop for their wiretaps.

The former intelligence officers quoted in the actual news—the ones who have traded their cloaks for consultancy fees—are even more blunt. They point out the screamingly obvious: embassies are increasingly irrelevant. We live in an age where the average smart fridge has more spying potential than a room full of diplomats drinking lukewarm tea and eating stale biscuits. The idea that a physical building is the primary vector for espionage in 2024 is like worrying about a cavalry charge in the age of drone warfare. If Beijing wants your secrets, they do not need a basement in East London; they just need you to keep using that “Which 19th-century Philosopher Are You?” quiz on social media. Modern espionage is a game of code, not corridors. The building is just a vanity project for a rising power and a convenient boogeyman for a fading one.

The sheer arrogance of the British concern is also worth a cynical chuckle. It assumes there is actually something left to steal. What secrets are we guarding so fiercely? The recipe for a failing healthcare system? The blueprints for a train line that will never be finished? The secret to how a country can vote itself into an economic cul-de-sac and then spend a decade wondering why it is dark? The Chinese are not building a mega-embassy to steal our future; they are building it because they have the money, and we have the real estate for sale. It is a landlord-tenant relationship, and we are the ones frantically scrubbing the floors while the new owner moves in the heavy furniture. We are the desperate sellers in a buyer's market, pretending we still get to dictate the terms of the lease.

The politicians will continue their shrill warnings, largely because it beats talking about the cost-of-living crisis or the fact that the Thames is currently a scenic route for raw sewage. They need a monster under the bed to keep the children quiet and the voters distracted. Meanwhile, MI5 will keep dreaming of a world where all their targets live in a single, easily bugged skyscraper. It is a marriage of convenience between two groups of people who are equally tired of their jobs but love the benefits. In the end, the “mega-embassy” isn't a threat; it’s a tombstone. It marks the transition from a world where physical presence mattered to a world where we are all just data points in a global server farm. Whether that farm is managed by a bored civil servant in Whitehall or an equally bored one in Beijing is a distinction that only matters to the people who get paid to care. For the rest of us, it is just another ugly building in a city that has forgotten how to build anything beautiful—or anything that actually serves its own people. Welcome to the future: it is monolithic, it is expensive, and it is watching you, but only because it has nothing better to do.