New Zealand’s spy bosses have told Parliament their concerns for the year.
In an age of wars, extremism, and fragile political systems, they are worried about a lot of things. But they’re especially worried about New Zealand’s teenage boys.
The spy bosses, Director-General of Security Andrew Hampton and GCSB Director-General Andrew Clark, speak annually to a high power committee of MPs at Parliament, chaired by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, with the leaders of Labour, ACT and NZ First.
In past years, they’ve spoken about the rise of foreign interference from China, Iran and Russia. In the wake of Covid-19, they worried about the risk of “anti-authority” political extremism.
This year, all of those previous fears remained, but the leaders of the Government’s spy agencies also spoke in detail about their concerns for New Zealand’s young men.
Hampton, who heads the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), told Parliament’s intelligence and security committee that his agency was increasingly monitoring teenage boys and young men due to fears of extremism and their desires to commit acts of violence.
He said there were a range of issues feeding into his agency’s concerns for young New Zealanders. He listed “the global environment, increased polarisation online, more young people engaging with violent content online”.
“There’s also the ability for people to go a long way down the radicalisation path by just engaging with a computer. So that is a concern.
“Also concerning, New Zealand has had two recent terrorist attacks, and we have had the attack in Bondi. These things do happen. We are not immune,” he said.
He urged families who were worried about someone becoming radicalised to reach out to the SIS or police.
“At a very pragmatic level, I am keen for parents to take a stronger interest in what their kids are looking at online,” Hampton said, with a large sigh.
He said most of the people currently being monitoring by the SIS were young men who were engaged with online, violent, content.
“If you look at our current active investigations… it looks like a year 13 boys school, and the diversity you would see there.
“There is not a single ideology or single ethnicity. But what is common is that these are largely people who are spending a lot of time online engaging with quite violent content. Unfortunately, they are also often people with other vulnerabilities around drugs, alcohol,” he said.
Speaking to reporters, he explained that “young males across the whole spectrum of society” were under active investigation. These included young men motivated by faith and race, as well as other grievances.
“We also have several people who have quite unclear motivations. They may be engaging with different types of ideologies. And our concern with those individuals is that, probably, what’s motivating them is violence. They’re looking for some sort of ideology to justify it,” he said.
He said “the bulk” of young men under investigation were in their late teens or early 20s. “For many of them, we became aware of them in their mid-teens,” he said.
Hampton said there remained a “possible” risk of a terror attack in New Zealand. The threat-level was unchanged, (it is the second lowest, above ‘unlikely’) following the outbreak of war in Iran and the Middle East.
He said the risk came from low-level actors, such as those seen previously in New Zealand or in Sydney late last year.
Hampton said he had been “shocked”, but not “surprised” to see the Bondi terror attack, which killed 15 people celebrating the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
“This is the type of low-capability-without-warning attack the NZSIS frequently warns could happen here,” he said.
Clark, who leads the GCSB, said his agency was focused on the was providing “round the clock” intelligence to the NZ Defence Force and Ministry of Foreign Affairs about war in the Middle East.
It had also been focused on targeting drug trading in the Pacific, and assisted Customs with seizing “several tonnes of narcotics”.
Recent cyber attacks targeting New Zealand health providers had also been cause for concern at the GCSB, and showed the range of motivations – and capabilities – of hackers.