The Security Intelligence Service says foreign states are working to build relationships with politicians, candidates and their staff ahead of this year’s general election, and it has named a Chinese Government-linked observatory caught trying to install satellite tracking equipment in New Zealand.
The findings are set out in the 2026 Security Threat Environment Report, published on Thursday. It is the fourth edition of the annual assessment, which the NZSIS describes as its own independent judgement rather than government policy, drawn from classified intelligence, government information, academic research and open source reporting.
The report makes six key assessments. It says geopolitical upheaval is bringing flow-on threats to New Zealand, that public and private sector organisations are being targeted for intellectual property and other non-public information, that diaspora community groups are being unfairly targeted by foreign states and their proxies, that more insiders are causing harm to their own organisations, that the national terrorism threat level remains at possible, and that violent extremism here is being shaped by a broad range of ideologies and by extremist online rhetoric moving into the mainstream.
On the election, the report says the NZSIS “has seen foreign interference activity targeting politicians, candidates and politically influential people”. It expects those efforts to continue through the campaign period late this year, but says they are “unlikely to impact the election results”.
The agency says interference actors will probably take advantage of how accessible candidates become once they are out campaigning. People around a candidate can also be targets. “Individuals who are close to candidates, such as their community contacts, advisors and staffers, can also be targeted due to their access and perceived influence,” the report says. It warns that some foreign states will use time in front of a candidate to present diaspora communities as politically uniform and aligned with that state, so a candidate may believe they are meeting a community spokesperson when they are in fact dealing with a foreign state actor. Co-optees who hide their links to a foreign government may also use donations, gifts and hospitality to build a relationship that is leveraged later, sometimes years afterwards. Voters weighing up who to back can compare party positions with the NEWS WIRE voting tool.
The advice to candidates is not to pull back from public life. The report says political candidates “should not be deterred from attending events or engaging with diverse communities in New Zealand”, and instead suggests being alert to persistent approaches, checking whether an organisation has links to a foreign government, and understanding the background to any donation, gift or hospitality.
The NZSIS says the People’s Republic of China remains the most active state conducting foreign interference in New Zealand, though several other countries do it to varying degrees. Ethnic communities here are frequently the targets, and the agency is at pains to say those communities are not the subject of its attention. “It is the state actors who are the focus of NZSIS’s attention,” the report says. “Communities are the people we are trying to protect.”
Director-general of security Andrew Hampton said authoritarian states want to keep their diaspora populations under control. “Authoritarian states seek to keep diaspora populations abroad under tight control so they can maintain their official narrative and lower the risk of perceived dissent,” he told RNZ. “State proxies use deception and at times corruption to build long-term influence with decision makers.”
The most concrete new disclosure concerns the space industry. The report says foreign state actors are trying to exploit the sector’s reputation for cooperation to install ground based space infrastructure, the dishes and antennas used to track satellites and space debris. New Zealand and Pacific Island countries are unusually well placed for that work because satellites passing over the Asia-Pacific can be tracked here with little radio interference, and because this country can be the first or last chance to communicate with a satellite crossing a region with poor coverage.
In a case study, the NZSIS says Purple Mountain Observatory, which is based in China and has close links to its government, tried in the past year to install such equipment in New Zealand. It worked with a local company that was “likely unaware of the equipment’s capability to collect intelligence of military value and would have no idea who was receiving the data”. The NZSIS says it disrupted the activity with other agencies, that it was not the first attempt by that organisation, and that it is “unlikely to be the last”. The observatory’s links to Beijing mean it could be compelled to hand over data, though the report assesses it would have done so willingly. The NZ Herald reported that operators have been led to believe they were entering ordinary commercial or research partnerships.
A second case study describes a Russian state-owned organisation seeking specialised components from the offshore subsidiary of a New Zealand registered company, technology the report says could have improved Russia’s military capability. The link back to the Russian government was concealed because sanctions and export controls left no legitimate route to the parts.
Hampton said New Zealand’s size and location no longer offer much protection. “This makes New Zealand not only geopolitically relevant, but attractive to threat actors who are unsentimental in their pursuit of our information and their influence over us,” he said in the agency’s media release. He said states may try to dupe a government insider with a lucrative job offer or force their way through a cyber backdoor.
Not all of it comes from offshore. “Global events are not the sole source of New Zealand’s security challenges – some of our concerns are home grown,” Hampton said, pointing to extremist voices contributing to a polarised information environment and some of them arguing for violence. He said young and vulnerable people are especially susceptible to violent extremist material online, which artificial intelligence is making worse, and that antisemitism and Islamophobia are among the themes running through the local extremist environment alongside other hateful narratives. The national terrorism threat level stays at possible, with a lone attacker in a crowded place the most likely scenario and one that would probably come with little or no warning.
The agency released new protective security guidance for Māori businesses and organisations, called Tiaki Pakihi Māori, which it discussed with leaders at a recent meeting of the National Iwi Chairs Forum. “We’re not trying be alarmist or cause fear,” Hampton said. “It’s about being as open as NZSIS can on what we see so that sectors, communities and individuals have the information they need to keep themselves and New Zealand safe.”
The report lands days after a change of minister. Paul Goldsmith picked up the GCSB and NZSIS portfolios this week along with Defence and Space, after Chris Penk lost them. The GCSB’s National Cyber Security Centre publishes its own annual cyber threat report in October.
What do you make of the SIS warning about candidates and campaign donations in an election year? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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