A newly released report from New Zealand’s intelligence service has laid out recent security threats — including case studies — in more detail than ever before.
It’s the second such report from the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS), which found the security situation was increasingly impacted by international conflicts and the threat of violent extremism.
Last month international pop star Taylor Swift was forced to cancel three European shows after two teenagers plotted to kill thousands of concert goers.
NZSIS Director-General Andrew Hampton told 1News the organisation was finding more young people “who may not have a fixed ideological motivation but are radicalised online and motivated by violence”.
“The level of foreign interference activity in New Zealand remains an ongoing concern … Equally concerning is the number of young people we see drawn into violent extremist themes and then becoming part of our investigative focus,” the report said.
The report included a number of case studies including analysis on recent investigations that lifted the lid on the range of national security threats observed by the NZSIS, he said.
Hampton said key risks identified included foreign interference and espionage, risks brewing from the ongoing power play in the Indo-Pacific, as well as violent extremism and another lone-wolf terror attack, similar to that of the Christchurch mosque attack.
“But the most complex threat we face is from the people’s republic of China,” he said.
He said New Zealand’s Chinese cultural organisations were being interfered with to be either “pro-CCP or at least neutral”.
International Law Professor Alexander Gillespie said the report highlighted such behaviour as “unwelcome”.
“The fact that they’re actually calling out China, and calling out Russia is in the hope that they will change their behaviour … We are saying ‘we can see what you’re doing, stop it’. It’s not welcome.”
In Australia, the terrorism threat level was raised last month from possible to probable due to an increased risk of politically motivated violence.
The conflict in the Middle East was also understood to have exacerbated concerns by security agencies about politically motivated violence in Australia, although it is not the direct cause of the threat level rising.
The NZSIS report included that the ongoing conflict in Gaza was being used by terrorist organisations to drive online radicalisation and recruitment.
“Agencies like ours we need to do all we can to try and identify who those individuals are. But it’s just as likely, even more likely, that it will be someone in the community who will see them mobilising to violence,” said Hampton.
