Source: Avast

Written by Jeremy Coppock, Reviewed by Jan Rubin

Published on September 30, 2026

Bandwidth-sharing apps offer a simple exchange: You agree to share your “unused bandwidth,” and in return, you might get an ad-free app experience, a free VPN, or a little extra cash. But behind the scenes, you’re enrolling your device in a residential proxy network, which gives unknown third parties access to your home internet connection, allowing them to make it look like their web traffic is coming from you. And some of these parties may be generating traffic you don’t want associated with your IP address, like phishing attacks. Read on to learn how bandwidth sharing really works, the risks it can create, and how to help protect your connection.

According to survey research on residential proxies, 29% of U.S. consumers say that at some point, they have installed an app offering rewards, money, or free features in exchange for sharing unused bandwidth. But only 33% of all respondents believe that an app that “shares your unused bandwidth” could create privacy or security risks.

Threat Researchers at Gen, the company behind Avast, analyzed attacks that Gen products blocked on Windows computers between January and mid-September 2026. Their systems counted 20.8 million distinct blocked attacks associated with traffic linked to residential proxies. Their technical analysis identifies an association with residential proxy infrastructure; it does not by itself establish that a proxy provider knew of, authorized, or participated in the underlying activity.

Residential proxy services have legitimate commercial uses, and malicious traffic passing through one of these networks does not mean the provider authorized or knew about it. Like other large online platforms and services, residential proxy networks can be abused by third parties trying to evade safeguards.

Still, that’s a lot of consumers installing software that may be riskier than they realize.

How bandwidth sharing really works

When you agree to “share your bandwidth,” you’re likely enrolling your device into a residential proxy network. These are services that buy access to home internet connections, like yours, and rent them out to third parties.

If you sign up, customers of a residential proxy network can route web traffic through your home connection. The websites they visit see your home IP address rather than the customer’s originating address. This can help those customers access location-specific content or collect public web data. It can also make automated traffic harder for websites to distinguish from ordinary consumer traffic.

Residential proxy networks act as intermediaries. They obtain access to participating users’ internet connections, sometimes through clearly disclosed opt-in programs and sometimes through software where the disclosure may be less prominent, and then provide that access to customers. Here’s a breakdown of how the model works for legitimate providers:

1. You opt in — You install an app that offers money, rewards, or free features in exchange for your “unused bandwidth.” Sometimes the app is transparent. Sometimes details are buried in the terms and conditions.
2. Your IP address is rented out — The residential proxy network adds your connection to a pool of millions of home IP addresses and sells access to paying customers. You’re not told who those customers are.
3. Strangers surf the web as you — Their traffic leaves through your connection. Every site they visit sees your public IP address and may associate the traffic with your internet provider and approximate location.

How you might have joined a residential proxy network

Overtly labeled bandwidth-sharing apps — like Honeygain — are one way your internet connection might get recruited into a residential proxy network. Apps might propose you “sell internet bandwidth,” “share internet for money,” or simply “share your traffic,” marketing it as a passive income scheme.

Bright Data, which describes itself as the world’s largest residential proxy provider, uses a partner-based approach. Third-party app developers may integrate Bright Data’s software development kit (SDK) and offer users a choice between viewing ads or sharing their internet connection in exchange for an ad-free experience. According to Bright Data, it pays developers a monthly fee for each user who opts in, and participating devices are used only when idle, online, and charged.

Another route are free VPNs, like Hola, some of which resell your connection to “peers” instead of charging you a subscription to use a virtual private network. Residential proxy software can also arrive on your device as malware if you download pirated or unverified games, movies, or apps, according to an FBI PSA.

Unfortunately, in our survey on residential proxies, 32% of U.S. consumers said they wouldn’t know what an app means when it offers to “share their unused bandwidth.”

Why companies want to borrow your home IP address

Companies — and murkier entities — want to browse the internet on your home IP address because it makes their traffic look less suspicious. Websites often block traffic from data centers, bots, known VPN providers, or sources of suspicious activity, but they’re much more careful about blocking home connections, since doing so risks shutting out a real customer.

Many companies who rent your bandwidth through residential proxy networks have perfectly legitimate reasons for doing so. These might include a company double-checking that a client’s ads actually appear in the countries they paid for, or performing price comparisons by collecting publicly listed prices online.

A major driver of the residential proxy market is now AI companies, according to a Gen article on the AI data race and home Wi-Fi connections. AI bots are constantly crawling the web: shopping assistants need today’s prices, research agents need to open pages as they work, and AI models need current data to stay useful. All of this means constant visits to websites that would rather not be visited by machines. Several large residential proxy providers even advertise products built specifically for AI training and AI agents.

If you’ve signed up for a bandwidth-sharing app, your home internet could be participating in this AI data race without you ever knowing.

How residential proxy networks can be misused

Not every party using a residential proxy network has a legitimate purpose. A 2026 PSA from the FBI states that criminals use residential proxy networks as a standard tool to conceal the source of malicious activity. That observation concerns criminal misuse of the technology and does not mean that every network, provider, or customer is engaged in wrongdoing.

Residential proxy services can be misused by customers whose activities may not be apparent during onboarding or ongoing monitoring. Providers may use customer-vetting and abuse-prevention measures, but bad actors can attempt to evade those controls and use residential proxy networks for harmful activity:

• Credential stuffing: Testing stolen passwords across thousands of accounts, rotating through home IP addresses so none get locked out. More information: https://www.avast.com/c-credential-stuffing
• Bulk buying: Snapping up concert tickets or limited stock before real customers get a chance, bypassing anti-bot safeguards designed to block automated purchases.
• Creating fake accounts: Signing up for large numbers of accounts by making each registration appear to come from a different home internet connection, which can help evade a platform’s signup limits.
• Ad fraud: Generating clicks and views that appear to come from real viewers, deceiving organizations that pay for ad performance.
• Scams, malware, and other forms of cybercrime: Sending people to phishing pages, serving malicious ads, spreading trojans, and running fake online stores — all from an IP address that doesn’t initially raise red flags.

What our Threat Researchers uncovered

Our Threat Researchers wanted to better understand the volume of abuse involving residential proxy networks. To do this, they analyzed data on cyberthreats that Avast and other Gen products blocked on Windows computers and identified which attacks had come through the residential proxy networks in our study.

Between January and mid-September 2026, our Threat Researchers’ systems counted 20.8 million distinct blocked attacks on Windows computers associated with residential proxies.

This volume indicates that malicious activity associated with residential proxy networks is not merely occasional. It does not, however, show that residential proxy providers initiated, approved, or were aware of the attacks.

What malicious actors may do through your “shared bandwidth”

The attacks our products blocked associated with residential proxy traffic were often phishing, with malicious ads and trojans making up much of the rest.

Phishing, which could take the form of deceptive messages pointing to fake login pages or payment portals built to harvest sensitive information, accounted for 5.15 million blocked attacks. Malicious advertising (malvertising), where an ad either carries malware or steers you to a scam site, followed at 1.26 million.

Next came trojans at 667,000 blocked attacks; these are programs that look useful, but quietly open a door to the victim’s device for a cybercriminal. After other miscellaneous threats (comprising 408,000 blocked attacks), the next largest threat category was e-shop scams, which are fake websites disguised as legit online stores; Gen products blocked 388,000 such attacks between January and mid-September 2026. File infectors, droppers, and generic scams accounted for the rest.

Most of the residential-proxy-associated traffic in this dataset was linked to a small number of networks. Bright Data accounted for around 83%, followed by Honeygain, NetNut, Tuxler, and Hola. These figures are not a ranking of provider risk or evidence that a provider authorized, knew of, or benefited from the underlying activity. Larger networks may appear more frequently in the data simply because they carry more traffic. The findings show that malicious actors may route traffic through established residential proxy networks despite providers’ efforts to prevent misuse.

Where we blocked the most attacks

Most devices running proxy software sit outside the West: India, Vietnam, Ukraine, and Brazil lead, with the U.S. only 10th. But the U.S. ranked fourth for attacks blocked, and France fifth. A likely reason is that automated traffic aimed at U.S. services looks far less suspicious arriving from a U.S. home IP address than from a server abroad.

The countries where Gen products blocked the most attacks associated with malicious residential proxy traffic were India (1.76 million blocked attacks), Brazil (1.50 million), and Vietnam (1.32 million).

Why sharing your bandwidth puts you at risk

If you use a bandwidth-sharing app, that traffic leaves through your home IP address, so as far as the rest of the internet is concerned, it came from your internet connection. If that traffic turns out to be shady, your address is the one on record. That carries risks for users:

• Your IP address could get blamed for abuse: Abuse reports go to your internet provider, and platforms may block your address outright. The actual person behind the abuse is nowhere in sight.
• Your traffic looks suspicious: Banks, retailers, and streaming services check IP addresses against blocklists. If your IP address is flagged, you may start hitting extra verification codes and logins that fail for no clear reason. You might start seeing constant CAPTCHAs or “you’re using a VPN” prompts as you browse the internet — even when you’re not. More information: https://www.avast.com/what-is-my-ip
• Your internet connection takes the load: Other people’s browsing runs through your line, eating bandwidth and, on a capped plan, your data allowance. Unless the bandwidth-sharing app only activates when your computer is idle, this could slow down your internet speed.
• Your own service could be at risk: Some ISPs restrict bandwidth sharing. Verizon’s Fios terms, for example, say customers can’t resell or rent their service or let outside parties use it. Terms: https://www.verizon.com/support/fios-customer-agreement/

Residential proxy abuse doesn’t normally announce itself, since the software is built to sit quietly in the background. So if you’re seeing inexplicable abuse reports, constant CAPTCHAs, and a slower-than-expected connection, it could be worth investigating whether you’re sharing your bandwidth. Any one of these signs alone has other explanations, but several at once warrants a closer look.

How to protect your home internet connection

Protecting your home connection starts with paying attention to which apps you install and what you agree to when you install them.

• Remember that nothing in life is free: If an app costs nothing and shows no ads, your connection may be what’s funding it.
• Reconsider paid bandwidth sharing: A few dollars a month might not be worth having your address tied to someone else’s traffic.
• Avoid pirated software: Cracked apps and unauthorized downloads could carry malware or unwanted software that enrolls your device in a proxy network without your knowledge.
• Read the terms and conditions: Bandwidth sharing, peer-to-peer networking, traffic routing, and network participation are phrases that matter. Try asking an LLM, like ChatGPT or Claude, to help you decipher convoluted T&Cs. Just remember to double check the output against the actual terms and conditions.
• Audit what’s already on your devices: Review unfamiliar apps and background services, especially utilities you do not use. Check their descriptions for “passive income,” “traffic monetization,” “bandwidth sharing,” or “network sharing,” which can be bundled into unrelated software. Uninstall the ones you don’t recognize or no longer need.
• Don’t forget your smart TV: Smart TVs, streaming boxes, and other internet-connected devices can run proxy software too. Stick to official app stores and avoid sideloading apps. The FBI calls out side-loaded apps on Android TV boxes in particular, as these can be used for bandwidth sharing.
• Talk to your household: Anyone who can install an app on the family computer might have accidentally enrolled your connection in a residential proxy network.
• Keep security software running: Cyber Safety software like Avast One helps block malware, scams, and other cyberthreats, whether your device is part of a residential proxy network or targeted by malicious traffic routed through one. Avast One: https://www.avast.com/avast-one

At Avast, we believe people should be able to explore everything the digital world has to offer fearlessly. That starts with understanding what’s happening behind the technology we use every day — and having the tools to protect ourselves when something isn’t what it seems. A little awareness about what you’re agreeing to can go a long way toward keeping your connection, devices, and digital life in your control.

FAQs

What is bandwidth sharing?

Bandwidth sharing means letting other people or companies route traffic through your connection, so it appears to come from your IP address, usually as part of a residential proxy network. Apps that offer money, rewards, or free features in exchange for your “unused bandwidth” are the most common form of it.

Are Bright Data, Hola, and Honeygain safe?

Bright Data, Hola, and Honeygain are established companies whose products and consumer-facing models differ. Bright Data may reach consumers through SDKs integrated into third-party apps, while Hola and Honeygain offer direct ways to share a connection.

Bandwidth sharing generally involves allowing third-party traffic to use a home IP address, which may consume data and bandwidth, affect the IP address’s reputation, or conflict with an ISP’s terms. Our research measured threats associated with residential proxy traffic; it did not evaluate the safety of individual apps or determine whether a provider knew of or authorized particular activity. Consumers should review each service’s disclosures, controls, and terms before deciding whether to participate.

Is bandwidth sharing safe?

It’s broadly legal, and the companies involved often are too. But there are risks. Your IP address can be tied to activity you had nothing to do with, and the abuse reports, blocklists, and account problems that follow all point back to you. ISPs often forbid bandwidth sharing in their terms of service.

Can you really earn money through internet bandwidth sharing?

Yes, but not much. According to Honeygain, a bandwidth sharing app, devices in higher-demand regions can earn users $3 to $10 a month.

Methodology

Gen Threat Labs (Gen is the company behind Avast) built telemetry to identify Windows software linked to 18 commercial residential proxy providers. The installation figures come from active Windows computers observed between September 1 and 15, 2026; the attack figures cover January through mid-September 2026 and count distinct blocked attacks, deduplicated so the same event isn’t counted twice.

These numbers reflect what we see across our own Windows user base, so they aren’t a count of every residential proxy endpoint worldwide or a measure of any provider’s market share. The telemetry identifies standalone Windows applications, so it misses proxy code embedded inside other apps and devices like phones, smart TVs, and routers. A single blocked attack can carry more than one threat label, so the categories overlap and can’t be added together. And attack volume doesn’t measure how dangerous a provider is, since a network with more devices simply appears more often in our data.

Disclosure: Gen uses Bright Data proxy and browser infrastructure in some privacy and reputation services. Bright Data had no involvement in this research, and the findings are based on Gen Threat Labs telemetry and security detections.

Original article: https://www.avast.com/c-hidden-risks-of-bandwidth-sharing

MIL OSI

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

– Published and distributed with permission of Media-Outreach.com.

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

– Published and distributed with permission of Media-Outreach.com.

Experts claim that corporate employees in Southeast Asia are neglecting cybersecurity rules due to their love for football, leading to an increase in fraud cases.

– Published and distributed with permission of Media-Outreach.com.

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA – Media OutReach Newswire – 3 July 2026 – The 2026 Malaysia AI Innovation and Development Exchange Forum and the launch of Omirol, Southeast Asia’s first native AIGC creation ecosystem platform, were successfully held in Kuala Lumpur. The event was jointly organized by FSBM Holdings Berhad, a Bursa Malaysia-listed company, and MOCHI MEDIA SDN. BHD. Through keynote speeches, panel discussions, Omirol showcases and MOU signing ceremonies, the forum explored the current development, challenges and future trends of the AIGC industry in Southeast Asia, while providing a platform for regional exchange and cooperation.

The event was officially supported by Malaysia’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI). Deputy Secretary-General (Technology Development) Puan Norsham binti Abdul Latip attended the event and delivered a keynote address, noting that Malaysia is actively supporting innovation in the local digital content industry. She stated that the launch of Omirol, as Southeast Asia’s first native AIGC creation ecosystem platform, demonstrates Malaysia’s leading position in technological innovation in the region. By integrating mature international industrial resources to support the rapid development of local enterprises, technologies and talent, Omirol is highly aligned with Malaysia’s strategic direction in advancing artificial intelligence, the digital economy and the cultural and creative industries, while also offering a new practical pathway for deepening China–Malaysia digital economy cooperation. The event brought together nearly 300 guests, including representatives from BytePlus Malaysia, Vision Tech Singapore, IBM Malaysia, TusStar Malaysia, Telekom Malaysia, Xiamen Airlines, xFusion Technologies Malaysia, Solution Group, China Mobile Malaysia and the Chinese Film Association of Malaysia, etc.

Strategic Partnerships to Build a Regional AIGC Ecosystem

One of the forum’s major highlights was the signing of strategic cooperation agreements between Omirol AI and six organizations, including the Southeast Asia Research Center for Humanities(SEARCH), TAR UMT (Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology), the animated feature film “Nanyang Volunteers”, ZIVO AI and Do Drama. The collaborations cover AI education, content marketing, production, distribution, and ecosystem development.

Among them, the strategic partnership with China’s V-Valley – Malanshan Video Cultural & Creative Industrial Park marked the most significant milestone. Ms. Zhou Jing, Vice Chairman of the Malanshan Global Expansion Alliance and Chairman of Fuhui Media Group, attended the forum in Kuala Lumpur to deliver a keynote speech and sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The agreement officially establishes a long-term strategic partnership between China’s national-level digital cultural industry cluster and Southeast Asia’s first native AIGC ecosystem platform. Both parties will collaborate across digital content creation, AI talent development, industrial resource sharing, and international cultural exchange to accelerate the coordinated development of the China–Malaysia digital creative industry.

Building an Open and Sustainable AI Ecosystem

During her keynote speech, Ms. Zhou Jing noted that Malanshan has rapidly evolved from a leading video content industrial park into one of China’s most important hubs for the integration of digital content and artificial intelligence. The recently established Malanshan Global Expansion Alliance brings together over 30 leading Chinese organizations, including Mango TV, Central South Publishing & Media Group, Hunan International Channel, CBG Tianze, AI technology companies, and international communication institutions, forming a comprehensive ecosystem covering content production, AI technologies, international distribution, and cross-border services. She emphasized that the future competition in AI will not simply be about who owns the most advanced technology, but about who can build an open, collaborative, and sustainable industry ecosystem. With a population exceeding 700 million and rich cultural diversity, Southeast Asia represents one of the world’s fastest-growing digital content markets and an important strategic destination for China’s cultural and creative industries.

Six Key Areas of Collaboration

According to the signed Memorandum of Understanding, Omirol AI and Malanshan will jointly promote practical cooperation across six major initiatives:

1. China–Malaysia AIGC Joint Training Academy
   Develop AI filmmaking and digital content creation programs with Malaysian universities such as TAR UMT by leveraging Malanshan’s educational resources and industry expertise.
2. Cross-border Licensed IP Resource Library
   Establish a shared IP ecosystem covering film, animation, tourism, cultural heritage, and digital assets to support AI-generated short dramas, animation, and creative productions.
3. Technology Integration and AI Infrastructure
   Connect leading Chinese AIGC technologies with the Omirol AI platform, enabling collaboration in computing power, AI models, and content generation technologies to improve production efficiency.
4. Global Content Distribution Network
   Expand international distribution channels for original Omirol AI content while supporting the localization and commercialization of premium Chinese digital content across Southeast Asia.
5. China–Malaysia AI Short Drama Competition
   Jointly organize an international AI short drama competition, accompanied by incubation programs and funding initiatives to cultivate globally competitive Southeast Asian IP.
6. Industry Collaboration & Investment Platform
   Establish regular China–Malaysia AI industry matchmaking events to promote technology exchange, global AIGC OPC community, project collaboration, and cross-border investment between enterprises from both countries.

Omirol AI: Building Southeast Asia’s Native AIGC Creaation Ecosystem

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Ms. Joyin He Jiaying, Founder and CEO of Omirol AI, said:

“Omirol is built to be the infrastructure of Southeast Asia. Our vision goes beyond providing AI tools—we aim to build an open ecosystem connecting creators, universities, enterprises, and industry resources, empowering Southeast Asia to become one of the world’s leading hubs for digital content innovation.” She added that Omirol AI has already integrated with China’s ‘LaiShu Processing’ pilot infrastructure in Shantou and is exploring collaboration with Inspur Information (Shantou) to significantly reduce token costs for Southeast Asian users.

Combined with the joint China–Malaysia technical team established together with FSBM and Malanshan’s mature AIGC industry resources, Omirol AI aims to deliver a fully localized, one-stop

AIGC ecosystem tailored to creators, businesses, and educational institutions across Southeast Asia.

A New Model for Cross-border AI Industry Collaboration

As the global AIGC industry shifts from competition in individual technologies to competition between complete ecosystems, integrated capabilities in AI platforms, content creation, IP commercialization, talent cultivation, and international distribution are becoming the key drivers of long-term competitiveness. Industry observers believe this partnership represents more than a business collaboration—it marks the first systematic integration of China’s mature digital content industry with Southeast Asia’s emerging AI innovation ecosystem. By combining technology, content, talent, and industrial collaboration, China and Malaysia are jointly pioneering a scalable model for international AIGC cooperation that could become a benchmark for the future development of Southeast Asia’s digital creative economy.

Event Video：https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CpLCytXn1/
Event Post: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19C1wQyTLL/

Hashtag: #Omirol

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

– Published and distributed with permission of Media-Outreach.com.

Appointment reinforces the hospital’s commitment to clinical excellence, strategic growth and delivering exceptional patient care.

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Source: Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA)

PSNA says the shift of the Israeli embassy into the Fisher Funds building in Wellington has concerned other tenants in the office high rise.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa is citing the Wellington Post front-page article which reported only some occupants of the 13-storey site had been told that Israel was moving in.

PSNA spokesperson Rinad Tamimi says the building’s owner was obviously trying to keep the arrival of the embassy a secret until it was too late to object.

“It’s pretty obvious why.  The Fisher Funds building is owned by Prime Property Group, which is controlled by rich-lister and former Israeli Defence Force major, Eyal Aharoni.”

“He’s looking after his own.”

Tamimi says the solution to the embassy location concern was the New Zealand government could expel the ambassador and his staff.

“We broke off diplomatic relations when it was discovered Israel’s Mossad spy agency had been getting fake New Zealand passports.  So, there is a precedent.”

“It all comes down to the fact that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.  It’s the world’s worst atrocity of this century and shamefully its ongoing perpetrators are flying their flag over our capital city,” Tamimi says.

“At this very moment, Israel is firing on the Sumud Flotilla trying to bring aid to Gaza and kidnapping and assaulting New Zealand citizens on that convoy.”

“Our ministers are shaking hands with the people who represent this illegal violence in international waters.”

Tamimi says though Fisher Funds does not own the building it operates out of, it must have powers as the holder of naming rights.

“If Fisher Funds’ CEO was to represent its KiwiSaver stakeholder interests, then he would tell Aharoni to find somewhere else for the Israelis to go to.”

“But since the CEO is an ex-minister of the National Party – Simon Power – then the head of Fisher Fund appears to part of the problem and not the solution.”

Rinad Tamimi

National Spokesperson

PSNA

MIL OSI

The FBI could get hold of masses of personal information about New Zealanders, a lawyer has warned MPs.

The Justice Select Committee has been hearing submissions on the Policing Amendment Bill, which would extend police powers to gather intelligence and give them expanded powers to close down public places in case of actual or anticipated disorder.

But Lloyd Gallagher – from the Law Association’s technology and law committee – told MPs on Monday that the bill had too few protections around the data, especially with the spread of AI.

“With the collaboration that we’re now doing with the FBI etc internationally, we run a risk of that information no longer being able to be within our control,” said Gallagher.

“Once it’s in the US’s hands under the Patriot Act etc, there’s a massive amount of risk of that data being put into databases and miscommunicated.”

The government has said the bill would restore police powers rather than giving them new ones.

But most of the groups that appeared at the select committee rejected that and laid out fears this was police “over-reach” – that the Bill was too vague and broad; set few limits on collecting data or what the personal information could then be used for; and that it would undermine trust in police, especially among Māori and Pasifika.

“The Bill’s intelligence-gathering powers will have a far greater impact on the privacy interests of the community at large than any other kind of information-gathering power currently available to law enforcement agencies,” Nick Chisnall KC of the Law Society told MPs.

Thomas Beagle listed technologies the Council for Civil Liberties believed police would deploy much more if the bill passed – facial recognition, automated number plate recognition, drones, live surveillance and gate analytics.

“Everything’s allowed by this Bill.

“There are really no limits,” Beagle said. He said there was also no oversight or appeal rights for people targeted.

“The Bill embodies the view police will never misuse or abuse their powers.”

Retail NZ and the Police Association spoke up in support of the Bill’s two parts.

Retail NZ cited rising violence in stores, and the Police Association’s Steve Watt said it gave clarity and the right tools.

“Police will actually have a firmer idea of what and where they can do things as we progress into the future,” said Watt.

The Bill’s second part – which would introduce infringements and arrest powers when places were declared off-limits – would help keep people safe, Watt said.

But prison reformer Cosmo Jeffrey said the Bill lacked a framework to control how police used or retained people’s data – including their photographs, which could be used over and again in facial recognition systems.

He had been in Twizel on his Ducati recently when a patrol officer pulled him over, Jeffrey said.

“He asked for my licence. Within seconds he brought up my history, started talking about something that happened 25 years ago and I was left standing there wondering, ‘Haven’t I done time, shouldn’t I be allowed to get on with my life?’.

“And I’m just wary of collecting information on people that can be called up in seconds and used against them.”

The Bill was put together under time pressure and without public consultation, the documents allied to it said. The consultation of agencies such as the Justice Ministry and Te Puni Kokiri suggested more safeguards.

Māori were not consulted, even though the Bill was designed to give police “certainty” to take images of people in public again. A widespread practice before a 2020-22 investigation ruled it was unlawful and had especially targeted rangatahi.

Shaymaa Arif – from BIPOC Legal Collective Aotearoa – told the committee they must insist on the systemic oversight lacking from the Bill, “before another generation of tamariki end up in a database”.

“The people that are most impacted and affected by this bill are not in this room with us,” Arif said. “They are Māori teenagers, they are children of colour, they are whānau at Friday prayers.”

Police would combine the intelligence gathering and expanded closure powers to turn public gatherings into surveillance areas using facial recognition, she warned.

Anjum Rahman said the Bill was a push towards a US-style over-securitisation that had not worked to prevent gun violence over there, and would not work here. The over-securitisation of New Zealand mosques after the March 2019 did not make them safer, because a shooter could simply target people as they left, she said.

The “powers in this Bill will make that worse” and target political protesters, while other initiatives could build societal trust, she said.

Several submitters questioned why the Bill was so vague in not defining the “functions” and “activities” that police could use to justify taking photos or videos, or for the first time without a warrant being able to gather intelligence in a private place that was not related to why they were there in the first place.

It was “just bad law” to leave it up to junior officers to decide for themselves whether what they were doing was justified on the grounds the intel might come in useful even if only in future, said Craig Clarke of Community Law Centres Aotearoa.

Year 13 Wellington High student Miro Thomas Ireson asked the committee to at least require police to use dedicated surveillance devices and not their Apple iPhones, which he believed might expose people’s data to America’s Cloud and Patriot Acts.

John Gregson of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists called for an across-government assessment of how the Bill combined with move-on orders would impact the most vulnerable people. Mentally ill people would fall foul by behaving like they were resisting the officers who got to make the call on cementing their biometric data into the state system, he said.

Specific safeguards needed to be added, plus a full Te Tiriti assessment done.

However, as it stood, the Bill had “zero protections for tamariki”, he said.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Fire and Emergency has turned down a request to help one of the United States’ top two urban search and rescue teams.

The USA-02 team in Los Angeles county wanted a specific expert to mentor them for one or two weeks a year ahead of a big test in 2029.

“A great honour,” said the manager who got the request last November.

USA-02 came to Christchurch’s aid after the 2011 earthquake and was part of US efforts to help here after Cyclone Gabrielle.

The 60 or so internationally-mandated USAR teams routinely help each other out with training – and help out other countries after disasters.

The international body called INSARAG said FENZ has a strong record for doing that.

But in this case, emails seen by RNZ showed FENZ turned down the US State Department in March.

The agency said it had to prioritise New Zealand and the Pacific.

“The issue was solely one of timing and organisational readiness,” Ken Cooper, national manager of response capability, said in an internal email last month.

However, Chris Lind, the expert the US wanted, emailed Cooper in March: “This represents a lost opportunity to grow our people and our teams for the better, at no cost to the organisation – particularly valuable in a fiscally constrained environment.”

USAR operations manager Glenn Hudson handled the initial request and called the rejection “short sighted” – the emails showed he had urged top management to quickly OK Lind going before some other agency got asked; it was a chance “to put FENZ and NZ Inc branding on the world stage”.

‘We’d love to have Chris’

RNZ understands it sometimes happens that mentor requests between countries are turned down, but not usually.

The Americans had specifically wanted Lind who they had worked with “extensively” including during Gabrielle in 2023, and noted how they had a big joint exercise coming up in May 2026 and “we’d love to have Chris there if he’s able to join us”.

The request added the sweetener for a second expert to come along each year with Lind, adding as usual with travel and accommodation expenses – but not salaries – paid.

They would have worked to help USA-02 pass its next five-yearly test to be reclassified to United Nations standards in 2029 – the gold standard for earthquake and landslide rescues. It is one of just two American teams classified this way. FENZ provided a mentor to help USA-01 pass in 2022 (NZL-01 who led at the fatal Mt Maunganui landslide this year passed their latest big test in 2024).

When RNZ began making inquiries, Fire and Emergency said it would not be proceeding with the mentor proposal.

“New Zealand’s current strategic focus is on developing and supporting capability across the Pacific nations, which requires us to prioritise our people and resources accordingly,” it said in a statement.

It did not agree to an interview.

Hudson played a key role marshalling USAR forces at Mt Maunganui.

In the emails, he told Cooper the LA county job would give personnel significant exposure to the international rescue environment at virtually no cost.

Later, he labelled the time taken to decide on it “embarrassing”, the lack of follow-up “another example of … poor leadership” and the decision itself “short-sighted”.

“I had hoped that Chris’s involvement would both reinforce and strengthen relationships with our partners, including the US and INSARAG,” he wrote.

INSARAG – the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group in Geneva – said it was a bilateral matter.

“It’s not our business to impose anything on them or to comment on their decisions.”

But it added that FENZ had made a “significant… and lasting contribution” to search and rescue internationally down the years.

FENZ is tied up in a contentious and months-long delayed restructuring that included a proposal to change top USAR – urban search and rescue – jobs.

‘We’ve got some very good friends’

USA-02 provided some of the 600 rescue workers from six countries that Christchurch relied on after the February 2011 quake.

“We’ve got some very good friends,” Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully said at the time.

The US ambassador echoed this in 2023 when a dozen technical experts were sent here after Cyclone Gabrielle: “When disaster strikes we are there for one another.”

FENZ reports talk of the “breadth and range” of its USAR capability and how they could be deployed worldwide “at a moment’s notice”.

NZL-01 rescued people after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. In 2023, 49 INSARAG teams led the search for thousands of people buried under rubble in Türkiye and Syria. Others went to Beirut after the port explosion in 2020, to the Indian ocean tsunami in 2004 and the 2015 Nepal quake.

INSARAG’s Sebastian Rhodes Stampa in Geneva told RNZ that Fire and Emergency’s record was strong.

“This includes supporting classifications or reclassifications for multiple teams over the years within the Asia-Pacific Region and as far away as Europe and the USA,” he said.

After the 2016 Kaikōura quake it led development of a new coordination and management system since adopted by teams globally.

‘I see the writing on the wall’

Hudson had urged Cooper for a quick OK when the request landed on November 25 from Robert Chapman at the State Department’s office of international disaster operations.

It was a “great honour”, Hudson had immediately told Chapman.

He told Cooper “should we deny this request we would be missing out” on FENZ staff development.

But by January and February there had been no decision.

“I am personally sorry this has taken so long,” Hudson told Chapman. He’d had trouble “getting this request across the line” and now he was stepping back while it was referred upwards to a FENZ deputy chief executive, understood to be Megan Stiffler.

“Standing by,” replied Chapman.

On March 17 Chapman wrote that he had not heard back. “Nothing from Megan … pretty sure I see the writing on the wall here, but it would be helpful for me to get it in writing so I can take it back up my chain.”

A few hours later, he got the thumbs down, Hudson writing, “We have looked at all workloads… and our current restructure will rely heavily on his [Lind’s] input developing USAR capability within New Zealand and with our Pacific partners.”

But an hour earlier an upset Hudson had emailed Cooper that FENZ was going to miss out on free and valuable development and strategic benefits.

In addition, he was in the “embarrassing” position of having told the State Department it would hear from FENZ leadership. “When I spoke to them today … I had to quickly make excuses for the lack of communication from the DCE.”

Lind also said the delay was frustrating and left the State Department hanging.

But he accepted the decision and would carry on, as he had always advocated being capable “within our own backyard in the first instance”, Lind wrote.

‘Prioritise our people and resources’

Cooper rejected that the decision was shortsighted or the process showed poor leadership.

FENZ had had options to work with the US without making the mentor opportunity specific to one person at the outset.

“This option was fully considered and supported by the DCE and you were asked to communicate that offer to the US state department,” he emailed Hudson and Lind.

RNZ understands it would be unusual if one country asked for someone by name as a mentor, for the other country to go ahead offering someone else.

Cooper said there was no guarantee of direct leadership engagement in a set timeframe and the process “does not warrant undermining comments”.

FENZ told RNZ it was all about focus: “It is important that we remain focused on the challenges and priorities we are facing organisationally and within the region.

It had “always been, and remains, supportive of opportunities and continues its active participation in INSARAG. We hope to continue work with our US counterparts to look at ways in which we can offer guidance and supportive.”

RNZ approached the US embassy for comment.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

When there is a Cabinet reshuffle, I tend to feel a little sorry for fresh ministers who get elevated up the rankings and landed with a big new job, or three.

A new ministry to run may be a dream realised. But for an MP who is conscientious or self-aware, it’s surely also a terrifying responsibility. So, how do they manage that transition, and how are ministers assisted and guided into their new roles?

The House asked a newish minister, recently further elevated, who has a reputation for being both competent and conscientious. Here is the edited conversation.

Chris Penk (National, MP for Kaipara ki Maharangi), is Minister of Defence, Space, the GCSB and SIS, Building and Construction, Veterans, and Associate Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery. He admits it’s a lot but professes to “enjoy it all”.

Learning on the job

How did you transition to becoming a minister?

A certain amount of it is learning on the job. For a very new member of Parliament becoming a minister probably is a challenge because they are learning two new jobs all at once.

Operating in Parliament, you’re aware of what ministers do, and you’re aware of the need for different skills, knowledge, and experience that you simply don’t have to have until such time as you reach that particular role.

As an MP, you’re contributing but you’re not really in charge of anything.

The reality is, it’s not the case that you’re making decisions on an individual basis as an MP. However, as a minister, there are decisions you make. Yes, government decisions are made almost by definition with Cabinet collective responsibility, but you propose things as a minister to your ministerial colleagues. (You don’t always get them across the line, by the way). And then there are statutory powers that the minister has to make in a particular area.

[Note: Legislation often delegates ongoing powers and specific decisions to individual ministers.]

A lot of people come to Parliament having never really been the boss of anything. You were a partner in a law firm and you’d been an officer in the Navy.

I’d been in charge of a couple of quite small teams, and so I had at least that experience, and whereas some people come to this place without having been in a leadership role and possibly find it difficult when they are asked to make a decision and every eye around the table is on you, waiting for you to pronounce as to your decision.

Conversely, colleagues who come in who have been used to being in decision-making roles, and [then] they don’t get much decision-making power, at least until they become a minister.

So when you became a minister you have to learn a lot of new rules before you actually have an enormous stack of papers land on your desk.

The papers come pretty well from day one. But yes, the briefings do as well, in terms of how to conduct your role. And some of it is just the mechanics of what the Cabinet Manual says about, you know, decision making, disclosures of interest, different rules for declaring gifts.

So, the rules of the game are different and you do need to get your head around that, but you also have to move very quickly to be able to do your job from day one. So the information flows, the decisions are needed.

[It can be much harder] if there’s a change of government. Inevitably, you have a large number of new ministers, and [issues requiring decisions will have built up], and suddenly you’re right in the deep end.

You would have a lot of decisions to make all at once and a lot of catching up to do, and a whole lot of people who maybe hadn’t done it before, and so no one much to mentor you either.

Usually, even in a new government, there will be some colleagues who have been ministers before. Coming in 2023, we had the benefit of former ministers from previous National administrations to talk to the new National ministers about how things work, and we had the ability to ask any [political] questions that wouldn’t have been appropriate [to ask] of the Cabinet Office.

You were already busy with building and construction, and veterans. But you’ve added a stack of extra portfolios. What happens when you take on new roles? Are there briefings, people to meet, places to visit? How do you get your head around it?

You do have to prioritise a bit. The inevitable elements are a BIM (Briefing to Incoming Minister) for each new portfolio, even if you’re transitioning from associate minister to minister.

The BIM sets out what’s within your control from a government point of view, but also the state of the sector more generally. In defence that was pointing out the shape of the Defence Force, the state of that, and also an update of upcoming decisions needed to keep the show on the road.

Also there’s the outside world in which one interacts. For example in building and construction, there are a couple of government-adjacent bodies, but also there’s a whole private sector of builders and other tradies who you need to be interacting with. Otherwise you can get the view only from the Beehive and not out in the real world. So all that is necessary as quickly as possible coming into a new role.

The team, the ministry, and the papers

We’re in your office in the Beehive. People might picture a vast team of helpers guiding you. But you haven’t got a big team, have you? Ministerial offices are small, especially as an international comparison.

Yeah, I think we’ve got a team that is appropriately small on the political side of things, so to speak. So in my role, I have one press secretary, one ministerial advisor, an SPS (someone who runs the office) and one person on the front desk. Between us, we do a lot.

There are the agencies or ministries themselves, but crucially, there’s a role which is halfway-between, which is what we call a private secretary, but you might call a secondi, or from a Defence point of view, they call a mil-sec (Military Secretary). That’s someone who comes from their agency to work in your ministerial office in the Beehive, and they provide a vital link between the agency and the minister and his or her team.

Yeah, a minister will have two or three of them for each of the departments or ministries or groups that they’re responsible for, right?

I’ve usually had only one private secretary for each of my portfolios until now. I’ve got one in the building and construction portfolio, but there are more in defence because they cover the Defence Force itself, also there’s Veterans (with different responsibilities and a lot of different work that needs to be done there), and there’s the Ministry of Defence, which is different again.

Those people help keep you apprised, but when the people with lots of brass on their shoulders turned up for meetings you must have felt a bit like a wee hamster; desperately sprinting, trying not to be the only guy in the room that didn’t know what was going on.

Yeah, that’s right. It’s literally the top brass in the room when it comes to defence.

[I have] a little bit of a defence background, but seeing these very senior figures coming in, it is an interesting, different way to operate and it’s very humbling to be their champion inside the Beehive and to be responsible for getting across the line, the things that they need to do their job safely and well.

You end up inevitably working closely with people, and the degree of trust personally between chief executives and ministers, I think, is really important if you’re to be successful in your role.

They run the department, and you are their champion, their front person, in a governorship role, right?

That’s right, but also you have to avoid appearing as though you’re captured [co-opted], and of course, avoid actually being captured. It’s not my role simply to do the things [an agency] wants to be done; but to understand, respect and acknowledge the importance of the work they do, and to represent that well, and to go into bat for them (consistent with the government’s aims), is the balance that every minister needs to try to strike.

Every ministry has a list of things they desperately want. But you’re between that rock and the hard place (the finance minister). You have to make difficult calls, I suppose.

It can seem very much like that. A classic of the genre, of course, is Yes Minister, or for modern audiences, Utopia is a brilliant documentary (as opposed to comedy). Just to echo that famous characterisation. But I think, all satire aside, I think there’s a genuine but healthy tension that needs to be struck between the … public sector … on the one hand, and the elected members of the Government.

The continuity and the stewardship of the public sector functions are important, but at the same time it’s important that the minister is able to represent not only the wishes of the government, but the people of New Zealand.

Ministries give their ministers copious briefings. How do you stay afloat? [Lists of ministerial briefings are often proactively released. The most recent examples from Defence include a very busy May 2024.]

Yeah, there’s a huge amount of information. The trick is to understand what’s most important; and to weigh that which is urgent with that which is important. Part of that is just judgement that you develop.

I think also you need a degree of trust in the government agencies, and in your staff, to highlight the things that are most worthy of your limited attention. But also, if you’ve got background or experience in a particular area, then you can make some of those value judgements yourself.

Having been a lawyer and also a naval officer, there are aspects of the role on which I’ve got a bit of a head start. I speak the language to some extent. I don’t know some other areas of the Defence Force so well, but then again, in my day job as MP for Kaipara ki Maharangi, the Whenuapai Airbase is within that so I’ve had a bit of interaction with the Air Force over time. So it’s all grist to the mill.

But on the other hand, coming into an area fresh, sometimes enables you to ask questions as an outsider with fresh eyes in a way that actually is helpful and quite healthy.

The fuller, audio version of this conversation is available at the link near the top of the article.

RNZ’s The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament’s Office of the Clerk. Enjoy our articles or podcast at RNZ.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LOS ANGELES, US – Newsaktuell – 7 May 2026 – The newly released 2026 Berggruen Governance Index (BGI) paints a mixed picture of global governance heading into a future of mounting shocks, finding widespread gains in public-goods provision from 2000 to 2023 even as democratic accountability edged down and state capacity showed little overall improvement.

The BGI, presented Wednesday by an international group of governance scholars, analyses measurable benchmarks of democratic accountability across 145 countries.

On a 100-point scale, the global score for democratic accountability slipped slightly from 65 in 2000 to 64 in 2023, the most recent data used in the project. The wave of democratisation observed in the closing decades of the last century has stalled in the last 15 years. Democratic accountability fell in 54 countries while it improved in 48 countries.

Yet the BGI — a collaborative project of the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Berlin’s Hertie School and the Berggruen Institute, a think tank headquartered in Los Angeles — captures remarkably widespread growth in provision of public goods.

Encompassing healthcare, education, infrastructure, environmental sustainability and conditions to foster employment and rising prosperity, public goods improved in 135 of the countries studied, while declining slightly in just four. The global average jumped from 58 to 69 points from 2000 to 2023.

The third component of what the BGI authors refer to as the “governance triangle” is state capacity, defined as the ability to tax, borrow and spend, control territory, operate scrupulous, competent bureaucracies and administer predictable rule of law. The index finds the global average ticking up from 48 to 49 points; 56 countries had increased state capacity while 57 declined.

“What does it tell us about the world ahead?” Prof. Helmut K. Anheier, a Luskin School sociologist and BGI principal investigator, asked during the public release of the 2026 BGI on the UCLA campus.

“Countries are not really improving in their governance performance in significant ways. … We’re not really having forward-looking investment in governance capacity. There is considerable inertia.”

The largest improvements across all three BGI components occurred in Gambia, which the report groups with “low-capacity developing states.” These states score low across the board, particularly in the provision of public goods. This cluster constitutes the poorest countries with the least developed economies, which face the most serious challenges.

“They have the greatest exposure to likely future crises, whether it’s global warming, whether it’s a new pandemic, whether it’s another financial crisis, whether it’s the impact of AI,” Anheier said. “And they have the least capacity to respond to it.”

Bhutan, Georgia, Iraq and Tunisia — which make up the remaining top five countries with the largest improvements in the BGI — are classified as “capacity-constrained states.” They tend to be middle-income with struggling democracies. These countries score higher across the board than the low-capacity developing states, but their state capacity tends to lag compared to public goods and democratic accountability.

The capacity-constrained states risk falling into “a cycle that erodes the institutions they have built,” Anheier said.

“Consolidated democratic states”, a cluster of most of the world’s richest countries, which score highly in all three BGI components, have to confront domestic complacency. Further, in the United States and some others, “political dysfunction” is leaving mounting problems unaddressed and risking erosion of state capacity, Anheier said.

At the other end of the spectrum, the country with the farthest fall on the BGI since 2000 is Nicaragua. Second from last is Venezuela, followed by Hong Kong, Hungary and Turkey. The rest of the bottom 10 are Russia, Iran, Poland, El Salvador and Belarus.

Since 2023, which is the last year of data available for the study, Poland and Hungary have both seen government changes via election, despite serious democratic backsliding. Both had fallen out of the group of “consolidated democratic states” by 2023 and moved into the capacity constrained cluster.

The other eight countries at the bottom of the list are all places that once had some semblance of competitive elections, but by now have little or no remaining pretense of democracy. They are grouped by the authors among the “authoritarian and hybrid states”, which have by far the lowest democratic accountability but outperform even some struggling democracies in delivering public goods.

These regimes have tended toward faster economic growth in the period observed. But that seeming prosperity, typically fueled by extractive industries or overreliance on exports, masks “serious institutional weaknesses in these countries, including divided elites,” Anheier said.

Relatively few countries — 21 of the 145 — changed enough for better or worse to be classified in a new group by the end of the 23-year study period.

“Movement between them is rare, but this is largely what we should expect,” said Stella Ghervas, a UCLA historian on a panel of experts who discussed the BGI findings Wednesday. “Government systems are not created in a moment. They evolve over long periods of time.”

Local conditions shaping governance in each country can rarely be quickly reset through political will or even external shocks, Joseph C. Saraceno, a Luskin School data scientist and BGI co-author, said Wednesday.

“Despite all the talk of major transformations happening in global affairs, the underlying configuration of governance simply doesn’t appear to change very much,” Saraceno said. “We use the term inertia to describe this reoccurring pattern. In other words, the structures of global governance are resistant to movement as the conditions beneath them are quite sticky: political economies, demographics, resource endowments. These are deeply layered, and they push each country toward the world that it already inhabits.”

But the challenges lurking around the world may not wait for the slow and difficult processes of political change and development to catch up.

“With the few exceptions of those countries in the consolidated democratic world,” Anheier said, “the great majority of the countries in the world is ill-prepared for the future.”

The full report, ‘ 2026 Berggruen Governance Index – The Four Worlds of Governance’, can be viewed and downloaded from the website of the UCLA’s Luskin School.

Frank Fuhrig, DNA

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New Zealand’s top spies will be weighing cutting the US out of some intelligence it shares with other Five Eyes partners, a former CIA head of counterintelligence has told RNZ.

Susan Miller had a long career in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including as its head of counterintelligence. She worked under the first Trump administration, but has since retired from the agency and seen her security clearance cut off by Trump in retribution for leading a probe into the Russian influence campaign during the 2016 US Presidential election.

Miller spoke with RNZ for a new podcast, The Agency, which has just been released in partnership with Bird of Paradise Productions. The podcast examines New Zealand’s close links with the CIA through the story of a Kiwi spy who spent six years in cover for the US agency.

Miller, who described New Zealand’s intelligence community as “righteous”, said she was certain they would be weighing how much could be shared with the US under Trump.

“I’m not going to be in that room when the Five Eyes, minus America, probably sit down and say, what do we do? Do we share Russia with him? Do we? Do we even claim that we’re allies anymore when he’s doing this? What do we do? And that’s what I think is probably going on.”

It was likely they would conclude: “We can’t share everything with this guy,” she said.

“I can’t trust him, and maybe they can on some China things and things like that, but when he’s acting like this … I would think that your leadership right now would be, at a minimum, thinking to themselves, wait a minute. I might not want to share this Russian information with this ambassador here, because he’s a Trump appointee.”

Late last year the UK stopped sharing intelligence with the US about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean because it was concerned about getting bound up in potentially illegal military strikes on the boats.

Miller said she was saddened that the intelligence sharing relationship had to be curtailed but cautioned against backing out of the Five Eyes arrangement completely.

“We’re always very focused on our relationship with Five Eyes and our joint things that we do on hard targets, whether it’s terrorism or China or, you know, name something else that comes up in the day … It’s super important that we have this and I would ask them to stay as long as they can and do what they are doing, keep that door open. Don’t completely break off from us.”

During her time with the CIA, Miller said she met with then-Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern as well as senior counterparts here to discuss China.

“Your team there, it’s a very small group that works in your intelligence service. They are righteous. I mean, these guys are super smart,” Miller said.

Listen now to all six episodes of The Agency, via Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.

In the podcast, the minister formerly in charge of New Zealand’s intelligence agencies, Andrew Little, agreed the agencies were likely to be thinking about “current conditions”.

“I think given their obligations under the New Zealand legislation – which is they’ve got to act independently, and they have to think carefully about their own legal and human rights obligations before sharing intelligence – I’d be surprised if they weren’t actively considering how they share intelligence and the current conditions.”

The “general sentiment and moves which undermine democracy” were “a cause for worry”, Little said.

“But I’m equally confident that the Five Eyes relationship will endure through that and without agencies like ours, and indeed, the other partners, compromising their principles, their requirement to respect democracy and freedom of expression and all those sorts of things. I think the Five Eyes arrangement will survive.”

A spokesman for the SIS said: “Whilst the global environment continues to be dynamic, the Five Eyes intelligence sharing partnership continues to function largely as it always has, and our relationships with our Five Eyes counterparts remains strong and enduring, regardless of political change within partner administrations.”

The Five Eyes was a “valued partnership”, with significant benefits to New Zealand.

“There are robust policies and processes in place to ensure that any cooperation New Zealand does with its Five Eyes partners, including the US, is consistent with New Zealand’s policy and legal framework, including human rights obligations.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

A briefing shows former Defence Minister Judith Collins met US defence technology powerhouse Palantir in February on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference to talk about an ongoing “partnership”.

Palantir had become the go-to tech company for the Pentagon and its AI technology had been key for targeting missiles in the war in Iran.

But the government here on Wednesday said the NZ Defence Force had “no existing plans” to use the company’s emerging technologies.

Collins’ meeting was revealed in a one-page briefing released under the Official Information Act to AUT law lecturer Dr Marco de Jong.

Collins met Palantir’s international president Laurence Lee, a former senior official in the UK’s defence and intelligence agencies.

The meeting on 13 February was an “informal discussion”, her office told RNZ on Wednesday.

The briefing to her ahead of the meeting suggested two “key messages” from Collins – who is also space and spy agency minister – to Lee.

The first was blanked out while the second said: “I acknowledge the importance of an ongoing effective partnership.

“Do you see any upcoming opportunities of interest for New Zealand in new technologies and emerging capabilities in this sector.” [sic]

Several paragraphs of ‘background’ were blanked out.

Collins’ office passed questions about the partnership with Palantir on to Chris Penk who was taking over her portfolios soon. She did not address what if any “opportunities” she discussed with Lee.

Penk on Wednesday told RNZ, “The New Zealand Defence Force has no existing plans to use Palantir in the emerging technologies space.

“The NZDF uses Palantir as an analytics platform to aid with planning. The Government’s ongoing partnership with Palantir is led by the GCSB.”

Emerging technologies featured in the Defence Capability Plan to spend $12 billion by 2029.

The Palantir meeting did not appear in Collins’ ministerial diary because individual meetings overseas often changed so were not recorded, her office said.

Palantir’s Maven draws up strike lists

The US and Israel launched surprise airstrikes on Iran on 28 February.

Many of the thousands of targets hit were selected from a list produced by Palantir’s technology called Maven “after it analyzed information from drones, satellite imagery and other sources”, the New York Times reported.

On 21 March, Reuters reported that Maven was being adopted by the Pentagon as a “core US military system”.

Another report a few days ago by Defense Scoop said Maven would become the “cornerstone” of a fused network of battlefield sensors and weapons cross air, land, sea and space.

The network was called Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control or CJADC2, where “Combined” stands for US partners and allies. The NZ Defence Force had been helping build the network.

For instance, the NZDF had been helping plan the world’s largest international maritime warfare exercise, RIMPAC 2026, where tech would be tested under Project Overmatch, the US navy’s core contribution to CJADC2, a navy report said.

Collins meets Amazon

At Munich, Collins also met with cloud computing giants Amazon Web Services (AWS) and with German multinational SAP, a separate 80-page briefing showed.

It said SAP’s latest “suite” of defence and security products “represents a timely and essential upgrade for the NZDF that will improve our organisational readiness and interoperability”.

It also said public agencies were increasingly using Amazon – they spent $16 million with it last year – and though the NZDF’s partner was Microsoft, “this does not preclude the use of other suppliers, including AWS”.

Collins met with another Pentagon favourite, drone-and-software-maker Anduril, last July as Defence began work on its new capability plan. Drones were key to it, however defence leaders told MPs recently that most vital in future would be the data-synthesising software behind defensive and offensive weaponry.

Last month the Pentagon consolidated its AI projects with Anduril into a 10-year contract worth up to $34b.

Palantir’s partnership with the US government has been widely reported for years, especially since the firm co-founded in 2004 by NZ citizen Peter Thiel – who helped bring vice president JD Vance to power – in 2017 turned its powerful surveillance technologies to data crunching for the Pentagon.

Much less information was publicly available about the NZ-Palantir partnership. It was reported in 2018 the US firm got a contract in 2012 with the Defence Force covering software, hardware and training 100 staff. Its hardware was still in use by NZDF in 2024, an annual review showed. During Covid, Palantir pitched its pandemic-tracking software to the Ministry of Health.

The defence ministry last month told de Jong its strategic leadership team had not had any meetings in the last year with Palantir, or with Anduril, or with other major defence contractors L3 Harris and Hirtenberger, or with NZ drone maker Syos.

Maven and the network for US partners including NZ

Maven was central to Palantir’s fortunes and the firm and the Pentagon liked to show off online what it could do, outmatching the work of thousands of military analysts.

With NATO last year also acquiring the platform, critics have voiced fears the speed and scale of its target analysis would take the place of critical thinking.

Palantir said in 2024 that Maven provided the cloud infrastructure, software capabilities and AI that powered some CJADC2 initiatives.

The NZDF takes part in experiments and testing run in parallel by the US navy, army and air force’s CJADC2 projects.

New Zealand and its Five Eyes intelligence partners signed up 18 months ago to the US navy’s Project Overmatch.

Overmatch had been setting up a new US-based Cooperative Project Office that NZ personnel were expected to help man, alongside a “coalition lab” for testing shared tech, the navy reported.

“The coalition network enables resilient communication and network connectivity amongst the ‘Five Eyes’ (FVEY) in a distributed environment to close kill-chains and enable long-range fires,” it said.

The US Marines recently set up their own CJADC2 project, Project Dynamis.

The NZDF was embracing emerging tech underwritten by a much expanded budget at the same time its core partners Australia, the UK and the US had streamlined sharing military tech between themselves, and as US President Donald Trump had been issuing directives to speed up arms transfers and trade under ‘America First’ policies.

Many militaries were stressing the need for speed like never before.

Defence’s annual review to Parliament last month said, “There was a need to move to a different ‘risk appetite’ to keep up with quickly evolving technology, placing a higher value on speed of delivery” even if this involved a “fast fail, rather than be slow to act and left behind”.

The NZDF had $26m set aside to boost this including adding to its badly depleted workforce.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Fifty years ago, the trial of Bill Sutch on charges of breaching the Official Secrets Act rocked the nation. Historian Sarah Gaitanos says evidence that was withheld from court gives us an insight into his work as an alleged agent of the KGB. That evidence is published here for the first time.

Bill Sutch could be extremely persuasive. An influential and self-assured intellectual, he could give an impressive account of himself.

In his many books his accounts of his epic solo trek in 1932, around the Arctic Ocean, across the Soviet Union and over the mountains of Afghanistan into India became more extravagant with every telling. Publishers, readers, even his wife Shirley Smith, believed them. Decades after his death, Smith was shocked to discover that it was mostly a fantasy.

Sutch had spent only two weeks in Russia. But that trip – and those two weeks in Soviet Russia – was nevertheless the start of a true story that culminated in his arrest in 1974.

In February 1975, Dr Bill Sutch was tried under the Official Secrets Act. The Act dealt with what was loosely known as spying and wrongful disclosure of communication of official information for a purpose that prejudiced the safety or interests of the state. Sutch, it was said, had been using his position of influence close to the government to gather sensitive information and pass it on to the Soviet Union – an enemy of the state in the Cold War era.

Sutch had been a senior economist in the public service, head of the Department of Industries and Commerce until his forced retirement. Since then he had worked as a consultant. He was an influential public speaker and author with a devoted following.

Over five decades since his trial, accounts of the circumstances surrounding the case have diverged depending on who is telling the story. Those who hold that Bill Sutch was a patriot who would never have betrayed his country shrug off the evidence that he was a KGB agent and point to the lack of evidence of what he was actually doing for Soviet intelligence.

But two documents that NZSIS officers found in Sutch’s office safe do provide direct insight into his activities and relationship with the KGB.

Both written in 1970, the first is a report with classified information on a Cabinet decision about Japanese fishing rights in the Pacific. It shows that Sutch, though no longer a public servant, had access to top level sensitive information. His report, apparently prepared for his KGB handler at the time, gave the Soviet Union an edge in their negotiations for fishing rights in New Zealand waters, potentially compromising the New Zealand Government’s efforts to police their relations with the USSR.

The second – the focus of this article – is a document made up of six short profiles of senior civil servants. It shows a different aspect of the role of a KGB agent.

Attorney General Sir Martyn Finlay, who had the responsibility of deciding whether the case should proceed to court, would later acknowledge that the profiles had ‘tipped the scales’ in his decision to prosecute Dr Sutch, adding that their ‘possible effects in one way or another’, had caused him the greatest anxiety.

This raises intriguing questions. The prosecution went to lengths to determine how to present them in the trial but in the event they were kept secret. The profiles remained classified until 2008 and have not been published until now.

Listen now to The Agency, a new podcast detailing the story of a Kiwi spy who was close to the Sutch case before spending six years in cover for the CIA

I came to the Bill Sutch story as the biographer of his wife (human rights campaigner and trailblazing lawyer) Shirley Smith. Sutch and Smith were married for over 30 years and after his death in 1975, she spent another 30 years defending his reputation. In private, she was more circumspect.

I examined her marriage, her responses to revelations about her husband that continued to emerge, her agonizing doubts and confusion, what she knew and didn’t know about his activities. She would say that her husband didn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story but decades after his death she was still discovering how far he had deceived her. Her discovery of letters Sutch sent to his mother revealed the simpler truth of his travels as a younger man.

She had been shocked, too, to learn of Sutch’s arrest on the night of 26 September, 1974 after agents picked him up on the way to a meeting with Dmitri Razgovorov, First Secretary of the USSR Embassy in Wellington.

The two had been observed meeting in obviously clandestine circumstances, following standard spy craft procedures known as ‘Moscow rules’.

After he was brought in, Detective Colin Lines urged Sutch to come clean and get ‘off the hook’ with the Russians. Sutch at one point asked what would happen to him if he did?

The primary purpose of the joint operation between Police and Security Service was to get Sutch’s cooperation, but Sutch refused to talk to anyone from the SIS and the police had not been sufficiently briefed as to how the matter would be hushed up. In return for his full co-operation, a full and frank account of his association with the Russians, Sutch was to be given immunity. He would have received the knighthood he longed for. His public reputation would have been left intact.

Not knowing this, Lines could only reply to Sutch that it would be a better outcome for him. Sutch considered this before replying that there was no hook.

This testimony, along with evidence of Security Service surveillance of Sutch’s clandestine meetings with Razgovorov, was presented in court.

Whether or not the jury would have returned a different verdict had the report on Japanese fishing rights and the profiles been presented as evidence, one cannot say. Sutch cut a frail figure in court and there was little desire to see him sent to jail. (He would die of liver cancer months later.) According to Smith, a juror told her that they wanted to acquit him and realised they didn’t have to give a reason.

While his acquittal did not end public debate, the profiles were kept out of the discussion until former Attorney General Sir Martyn Finlay was interviewed about them almost 20 years later. What exactly they contained was still not disclosed.

To recap, the profiles refer to a document found in a file labelled ‘Foreign Affairs’ in the safe in Sutch’s office. The document was headed ‘Memo for File’, dated 20 October 1970, and was made up of short pen portraits describing the personal experiences, aptitudes and ambitions of six civil servants, their interests and relationships with their wives.

In four of the six, their attitude towards the Soviet Union is indicated.

The subjects were Tom Larkin and Charles Craw of Foreign Affairs, Geoff Easterbrook-Smith, Geoff Datson and Harold Holden of Industries and Commerce, and Jack Lewin, Department of Statistics. Lewin was Sutch’s closest friend. None of these men were ever suspected of spying for the Soviet Union.

You can read the profiles at the bottom of this article, along with the accompanying SIS analysis.

The SIS analyst who examined the subject, written style, nature and scope of the comments concluded that they were written by a single author, a man with a ‘good working knowledge of Foreign Affairs and Industries and Commerce personnel, and of I & C departmental activities and postings reaching many years back.’

The author wrote familiarly about his subjects as if they were inferior to him. It was noted that Sutch’s background of employment, his general status and degree of influence over the years, fitted him for the part.

The profiles seemed to have been intended for a third person who had asked for information of this sort, the analyst concluded. The first five men were all dealt with in a similar way while the comments on Lewin were more specific.

The analyst wrote a hypothetical brief that the author might have been given:

Prepare brief notes on some of the more senior offices in Industries & Commerce and Foreign affairs Depts. known to you, who hold liberal left-wing political views. I attach a list of points to be covered in your consideration of the men. At the same time, include some comments on LEWIN with respect to his political views, his relationship to the NZ Labour Party and his family interests.

1 Age

2 present job/special expertise

3 Overseas postings

4 Experience and ability

5 Political views (general)

6 Political views during youth

7 Attitude to Soviet Union

8 Intelligence/intellectual ability

9 Interests/hobbies

10 Wife’s attitudes

11 Openness/talkativeness

12 Response to socials/dinners/parties

13 Vulnerabilities/weaknesses/ambitions

The analyst prepared this brief without reference to the Canadian Royal Commission Report of 27 June 1946 (the Gouzenko Report) which outlined criteria Soviet military intelligence used for recruiting agents, based on a document provided by GRU defector, Igor Gouzenko.

Subsequently the analyst studied that report and compared the similarities. He concluded that the ‘memo for file’ was written by Dr Sutch for a trained Russian Intelligence Officer seeking personality information on senior officers in the New Zealand Government Service, specifically in areas where they would expect to have access to classified information and to travel abroad on Government postings.

Crucially, this could then be used by the Soviets for recruitment.

The profiles offer the kind of information that enables an intelligence officer to assess a target: an individual’s likely career path, how to make a friendly approach based on mutual interest, vulnerabilities that might offer leverage, and so on.

The recruitment of foreign government officials is highly prized by intelligence agencies because it allows access not simply to information, but also to people elsewhere in the hierarchy. If the target is recruited in place and remains well placed, the connection can remain open and fruitful over many years.

Intelligence and defence officials are prime targets; after them, foreign affairs.

The profiles were therefore seen as significant supplementary evidence. The Crown Counsels, Solicitor General Richard Savage and Paul Neazor, decided early on to call an expert witness who could explain the methods and information targets of Soviet intelligence agencies. They considered calling a New Zealand intelligence officer to give such evidence, then decided it would be preferable to call an officer from another Service. They approached MI5 but the British were unhappy about one of their officers appearing in court in New Zealand.

Reverting to their original proposal, on 20 December, the prosecution gave preliminary notice of their intention to call additional evidence along with an officer of the New Zealand Service to explain it.

When Bungay showed the profiles to Sutch, he denied all knowledge of them and said they must have been a plant. Smith later told him that wouldn’t sound likely.

Sutch’s former sister-in-law Gladys Brown, who had been his typist in 1970, told police that she hadn’t typed them and didn’t know anything about them but according to an unsent letter to Martyn Finlay among Smith’s papers, Brown confirmed that they were typed on the office typewriter. An SIS search for the typewriter was unsuccessful. It left a question as to whether all of this would amount to evidence in the law.

The decision not to present the profiles in the trial surprised Finlay. He later asked for an explanation. Neazor wrote on 21 July 1975 that it was decided ‘there could be an argument about its probative value not sufficiently outweighing its prejudicial effect, and that it was not of sufficient value to the case as framed to warrant the diversion it would cause.’

The ‘diversion’ resonates with Finlay’s later comment about their ‘possible effects in one way or another’ that caused him such anxiety. They possibly had political repercussions in mind.

The report on the Japanese fishing rights was also not given in evidence. And at the last minute before the trial, the judge decided that cryptic entries from Sutch’s diaries that recorded times and places of clandestine meetings with his handler for years before 1974 were inadmissible because they predated the time-frame of the charge.

All this evidence was analysed by Chief Ombudsman Sir Guy Powles in his [https://www.nzsis.govt.nz/assets/NZSIS-Documents/News-supporting/SutchOmbudsmanReport.pdf

investigation of NZSIS after the Sutch trial], following allegations against them. He found the allegations were without foundation but noted that Sutch’s association with the Russians had lasted for a period of years before his meeting with Razgovorov on April 18, 1974.

Other circumstantial evidence that came to public attention was the wealth Sutch had accumulated, exceeding anything he could have earned legitimately in his career as a public servant, a consultant or as an author (even if his claim that his book Poverty and Progress sold 100,000 copies was true).

Attempts to put a figure on Sutch’s wealth have been based on some of his properties and holdings in New Zealand but not overseas. Smith discovered only in the late 1980s that his estate included a property in the Bahamas. His various overseas funds that could not be known include those in his Swiss bank account.

Sutch’s attempt to hide his wealth was made public after his death when the New Zealand Gazette named him as an evader of taxes estimated at $47,241 between 1966 and 1974, the second highest for any individual among about 650. His undisclosed income during that period was estimated to be about $100,000.

The first evidence that the package Sutch gave Razgovorov in Holloway Road on the 26 September 1974 had reached the Soviet Embassy came from Moscow after the Cold War was over. In 1993, New Zealand journalist Geoff Chapple tracked down Alexei Makarov, who had been Chargé d’Affaires of the Soviet Embassy in Wellington in 1974.

Makarov decided that with the breakup of the USSR and its secret police he had nothing to fear from giving his account of the Sutch affair. He recalled the circumstances of how he received the package of KGB material that Sutch had given to Razgovorov.

Makarov tracked down Razgovorov, who was living in retirement in Moscow. Besides recalling his meeting with Sutch in Holloway Road and how he delivered the package to his driver, Razgovorov told Makarov that he had ‘inherited’ Sutch from the KGB officer he had replaced in Wellington.

In 2014, evidence emerged from the Mitrokhin Archive in Cambridge, England, that Dr Sutch had been recruited to the Soviet intelligence service in 1950.

The Mitrokhin Archive comprises notes of KGB foreign intelligence files hand-copied secretly by archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, who had spent most of his working life in the KGB foreign intelligence archives. Disillusioned by the Soviet system and sympathetic towards dissidents, his chance came to do something in 1972 when he was given the job of overseeing the transfer of KGB foreign intelligence archives to new headquarters.

Mitrokhin secretly wrote summaries of the files, smuggled them out of the building and hid them under the floor in his villa. Over the ten years it took to complete the transfer, he accumulated six trunks of material.

In 1992 Mitrokhin approached British MI6, who then arranged for him, his family and his archive to be brought to the United Kingdom. As copies of original documents, the files have no direct evidential value, but their value in terms of intelligence proved immense. They include the following short entry under a codename: ‘Maori’ – Englishman, born 1907, New Zealand citizen, doctor of philosophy, former high-level bureaucrat in government service, retired in 1965, recruited in 1950, contact with him via Drozhzhin.

The biographical detail fits Sutch exactly and an extensive search proved it fitted him uniquely. After establishing the identity, the significant information is ‘recruited in 1950’.

‘Recruited’ in Russian has a specific meaning in Soviet intelligence, signifying that the subject knows, is tasked and will respond. Mitrokhin later published a KGB dictionary in which he defined ‘agent recruitment’ as ‘the covert involvement as agents of individuals who have opportunities to carry out intelligence tasks at the present time or in the future’.

Transactions were formally recorded. From the moment a KGB agent was on the payroll, he was ‘on the hook’.

Mitrokhin’s entry was written in the early 1970s, before Sutch’s arrest and trial. Mitrokhin names Drozhzhin as Sutch’s contact, confirming Razgovorov’s claim that he had inherited Sutch from his predecessor.

Yuri Timofeyevich Drozhzhin, First Secretary at the USSR Legation and the leading Soviet Intelligence officer in Wellington before Razgovorov, was regarded as a master spy. The pen portraits were written by Sutch for him.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Listen now to The Agency, a new podcast detailing the story of a Kiwi spy who was close to the Sutch case before spending six years in cover for the CIA

Kit Bennetts, who was born and raised in Masterton, was recruited in Wellington by the CIA Chief of Station at the US Embassy in 1979. At the time he was working for New Zealand’s SIS.

He shared details of his work in hours of interviews for a new podcast, The Agency, released by RNZ and Bird of Paradise.

In the podcast, Bennetts reveals how he worked on behalf of the CIA “belly-to-belly” with a senior Soviet official, trying to funnel “dead-end technology” into the system of America’s Cold War rival.

See photos and video from the series below.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

A New Zealander has revealed details of a years-long stint spying for America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Cold War.

Kit Bennetts, who was born and raised in Masterton, was recruited in Wellington by the CIA Chief of Station at the US Embassy in 1979. At the time he was working for New Zealand’s SIS.

He shared details of his work in hours of interviews for a new podcast, The Agency, which is released by RNZ and Bird of Paradise today.

In the podcast, Bennetts reveals how he worked on behalf of the CIA “belly-to-belly” with a senior Soviet official, trying to funnel “dead-end technology” into the system of America’s Cold War rival.

“I was working in cover, undeclared, targeting Soviet intelligence officers and East European intelligence officers,” Bennetts says.

“I got successful against a couple of Soviets and a couple of east Europeans, and I became friendly with them and that’s where it developed from.”

What was initially expected to be a two-year stint turned into six-and-a-half years operating in cover for the CIA overseas. He reflects on times when he knew he was in grave danger but carried on regardless.

“I don’t think I slept much, because I knew that if this was going to happen, it wouldn’t matter if I was walking around with an M16, they would have got me.”

Listen now to The Agency, a new podcast detailing the story of a Kiwi spy who was close to the Sutch case before spending six years in cover for the CIA

New details in the Bill Sutch spy case

The first episode of The Agency touches on Kit Bennetts’ involvement in the country’s most notorious spy scandal, the arrest – and subsequent trial – of Dr Bill Sutch in 1975/6.

Sutch was found not guilty but subsequent evidence has emerged over the decades about his connections to the Soviet Union. RNZ is today publishing details from evidence that was not presented to the jury in Sutch’s trial.

A series of pen portraits of six civil servants were found by the SIS in Sutch’s office. The existence of these profiles has previously been reported but not what they actually said. They offer an insight into the methods and sources used by Soviet intelligence to recruit and run agents.

“They were pretty nasty sort of pen portraits of people who were essentially his [Sutch’s] friends, who he was lining up to take over from him,” Bennetts says.

RNZ has obtained the profiles and published them, together with an analysis by historian Sarah Gaitanos.

Trump, Five Eyes and re-evaluating NZ’s place

The six-part series also explores New Zealand’s ties with the US, via the Five Eyes alliance, which includes intelligence sharing.

Experts, including from within senior levels of the US Government, give a range of views on the ongoing risk – and value – of that alliance. The unpredictability of the current US administration, under President Donald Trump, is a cause for concern but there is widespread agreement on the enduring value to New Zealand of participation in the group.

Andrew Little, the minister in charge of the intelligence agencies in the last Labour Government, tells the podcast there continue to be “exchanges” of personnel between the Five Eyes partners.

“The Five Eyes partners in particular, work closely together, more so than pretty much any other group of intelligence agencies anywhere in the world. … New Zealand’s relationship with each of the Five Eyes partners, UK, US, Australia and Canada, is particularly close.”

In a statement, an SIS spokesman said relationships with overseas intelligence and security partners – particularly within the Five Eyes – are vital to New Zealand’s national security.

“As you would expect, NZSIS does have a small number of staff posted offshore in liaison roles.”

How to listen

The Agency follows on from The Service, another Cold War espionage co-production between Bird of Paradise and RNZ, about a raid on the Czechoslovakian embassy in Wellington by the SIS and MI6.

The series epilogue of The Service also discussed another raid that had taken place as a joint operation – this time between the SIS and CIA, in the early 1990s; the target was the Iranian embassy in Island Bay. Sources within the New Zealand intelligence community have subsequently suggested the wider aim of the operation was to enable US monitoring of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The first two episodes of The Agency are available now on all podcast platforms, and via the RNZ podcast player. Subsequent episodes will be released this Friday and next Tuesday.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

By Holmes Lybrand, Evan Perez, Katelyn Polantz, Kara Scannell, CNN

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who President Donald Trump tapped to serve as the interim head of the Justice Department, managed the day-to-day operations of the department over the past year, often taking a more public-facing role when Pam Bondi was in hot water with White House officials.

Early in the administration, in fact, the White House told the now-former attorney general she could not appear on Fox News for a time amid fallout over the Justice Department’s handling of making parts of the documents related to Jeffrey Epstein public. Blanche appeared in her absence, helming the administration’s defense over the drawn-out Epstein debacle.

Blanche was Trump’s defense attorney across several criminal cases the then-former president faced following his first term in office, one of several members of Trump’s legal team given key DOJ or judiciary posts.

When Blanche took the deputy attorney general position, his experience as a former prosecutor and as a lawyer at a large law firm in New York was seen by career officials as an encouraging sign that the department’s institutional norms would be protected, something that did not bear out.

Swaths of DOJ and FBI officials who worked on 6 January or Trump-related cases have been removed, attempts have been made to prosecute the president’s political enemies, and the cloud of the Epstein files continues to hang over the department.

As deputy attorney general, and while he has served in parrying attacks related to Epstein and beyond, Blanche faced blistering criticism after his interview last year with Epstein’s co-conspirator and business partner Ghislaine Maxwell.

Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for her role trafficking girls for Epstein, was upgraded to a minimum-security prison camp. In December, Blanche said the Bureau of Prisons made the decision to move Maxwell, adding that “she was suffering numerous and numerous threats against her life.”

Blanche also came under criticism because he hadn’t asked about documents congressional Democrats had subpoenaed from the Epstein estate.

“When I interviewed Maxwell, law enforcement didn’t have the materials Epstein’s estate hid for years and only just provided to Congress,” Blanche said in a post on X, responding to Trump critic George Conway.

Thursday (all times local), Blanche on Fox News said Epstein didn’t have anything to do with Bondi’s removal and also sought to bat down conspiracy theories around Epstein – including the idea that he was a spy – marking his continued desire to move past the issue.

“I think that to the extent that the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward,” Blanche said.

“I’m not sure you totally get what people feel about that,” Fox News host Jesse Watters said later on Blanche’s responses to Epstein-related questions.

Fighting Trump’s perceived political enemies

At the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, Blanche boasted about what he saw as one major success of the past year: ousting political enemies from the department.

Every DOJ employee – including FBI agents – who worked on investigations or cases around Trump following his first term had been fired, resigned, or took early retirement, Blanche said, adding that the number amounted to “over 200” people.

“There is not a single man or woman at the Department of Justice who had anything to do with those prosecutions,” Blanche said.

Blanche’s continued work as Trump’s personal attorney also translated into adopting some of the language of the president’s MAGA allies and publicly clashing with Trump critics.

Blanche defended Bondi after she was fired Thursday.

“As President Trump said today, the attorney general made our country safe again,” Blanche said on Fox News, hours after the announcement. “And she is a friend, and she did a great job in the first year of this administration.”

The new head of the Justice Department said he understood the frustration and desire to go after Trump’s political enemies when pressed on the issue and the failure to prosecute those individuals. Blanche noted that he was Trump’s defense attorney in multiple criminal cases following Trump’s first term.

“I had a firsthand accounting of what happened,” Blanche said. “Yes, I understand it. The American people understand it, and I know that the American people expect that it will never happen again, and we take that seriously.”

Blanche in meetings flashes a dry sense of humor but is also known to quickly lash out in anger when his frustrations boil over, associates say. At the Justice Department, he often led meetings, even those that the attorney general was supposed to be in charge of, an indication that he wielded the day-to-day power at the department.

Trump is considering replacing Bondi with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, according to sources, though others may also be on the short list. The former congressman could face harsh probing from senators over his very limited legal experience as well as his defense of Trump during his first impeachment hearings in late 2019.

In the trenches with Trump

Blanche was one of Trump’s lawyers for the New York hush-money case as well as the two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith over Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of classified material after leaving office.

He is the only administration official who sat beside and guided Trump while his freedom was on the line during the criminal trial involving hush money payments in New York. While Trump was convicted, Blanche’s legal maneuvering resulted in Trump’s sentencing being postponed until after the election, all but ensuring that Trump would avoid serving any prison time.

The Trump defense team also won at the Supreme Court expanded protections from criminal prosecution for the president, in the 6 January case, just before Trump retook the presidency. He and his team also convinced a Trump-appointed judge in Florida to throw out the classified documents charges.

More recently, the Justice Department supported the same judge, Aileen Cannon, burying part of the special counsel’s final report on that investigation into Trump and others.

Beyond Epstein, Blanche has also faced criticism over public comments he made regarding the wrongfully deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, comments that led to Blanche nearly having to testify about his oversight of the case in Tennessee against Abrego Garcia.

During his confirmation hearing last year for deputy attorney general, Blanche declined to say if he would recuse himself from Justice Department efforts to re-examine the prior work of federal prosecutors on the Trump cases – cases in which Blanche represented Trump.

Blanche responded to questions about conflicts of interest by saying he would not violate his ethical obligations.

Previous Justice Departments attempted to maintain distance from political winds and the president’s direct wishes, and recusals were common when a department lawyer had previously been on the defense side of an investigation. That wall was most evident when former Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from overseeing the Russia investigation around Trump’s 2016 political campaign.

Yet Blanche has continued to attack the prosecutions of Trump, now from inside the Department.

“Jack Smith is a proven liar, consistent with these fake accusations from his failed vendetta against the President,” Blanche wrote on social media last week regarding the former Justice Department special counsel who had secured two indictments against Trump in 2023. Both were dismissed before trial.

“There is absolutely zero proof of wrongdoing,” Blanche added, echoing the same position he had taken in court while opposite the Justice Department.

– CNN

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Chris Penk and Penny Simmonds have been promoted to Cabinet, as the prime minister reshuffles his ministerial lineup.

The reshuffle also sees first-term MPs Cameron Brewer and Mike Butterick made ministers outside Cabinet.

The changes were necessitated by the upcoming retirement of Judith Collins, as well as Dr Shane Reti’s decision to stand down at the election.

Collins’ defence, space, and GCSB and NZSIS portfolios have been given to Penk, Paul Goldsmith takes on responsibility for the public service and digitising government, and Chris Bishop picks up the attorney-general role.

Bishop’s position as Leader of the House has been given to Louise Upston.

Bishop, who was also National’s campaign chair, was widely tipped to lose some ministerial portfolios to ease his workload to free him up for the campaign. Instead, it is the role of campaign chair that he has had to relinquish, to Simeon Brown.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Bishop had a “massive workload” with housing, transport, infrastructure, RMA reform, and his new attorney-general role, and losing the campaign chair was a consequence of that.

Luxon said the two had a “very positive conversation” and he “absolutely” trusted Bishop.

“He’s key to our team, he’s a critical part of our senior leadership group,” he said.

Luxon denied it was anything to do with rumours Bishop was running the numbers against him last year.

“I think you’re really overthinking this,” Luxon said.

He said Brown was equally capable of chairing the campaign, as part of his “brains trust” which included Bishop, Upston, Goldsmith, and Finance Minister Nicola Willis.

Simmonds takes up Reti’s science, innovation, and technology portfolio, and his universities role has been disestablished to make Simmonds the minister for tertiary education.

She had previously been minister for vocational education, as well as environment. The latter has been given to Nicola Grigg, who remains outside Cabinet.

Goldsmith also becomes the new minister for Pacific Peoples, with Luxon admitting National did not have Pacific representation.

“I freely admit we don’t have a Pasifika person in our National Party team and in our Cabinet. That’s something that we’re working very hard on. As I’ve said to you before, we need to make sure we continue to work as we go to 2026 on the campaign on getting great candidates from the Pasifika world.”

Brewer, who has been chairing Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee (a weighty role which often leads to a ministerial promotion) has been made minister of commerce and consumer affairs and minister for small business and manufacturing, while Butterick will become minister for land information.

Luxon said he wanted to make a “super small business minister” role by giving Brewer the two roles, while Butterick was a “natural leader” of National’s rural MPs.

Brewer would also take over supermarket reforms, as the previous Commerce and Consumer Affairs minister Scott Simpson had a conflict which had led to Willis taking responsibility.

Other changes include Brown picking up the energy portfolio from Simon Watts, who in turn takes over Brown’s minister for Auckland role.

Luxon said the past few weeks had underlined how important energy security was, and so was giving the role to a “senior” minister.

He said he had not lost confidence in Watts.

Luxon acknowledged Collins and Reti’s departures.

“New Zealand is better for Judith and Shane deciding to enter public service and I am grateful to count them both as friends. On behalf of the government and the National Party, I wish them all the best for their futures outside Parliament.”

Matt Doocey remains in Cabinet, and has not picked up any portfolios other than his existing mental health role.

He had been the sole South Island representative in Cabinet, but that has now doubled with Simmonds’ addition.

The changes come into effect on Tuesday, 7 April.

Luxon had not reshuffled his lineup since January 2025, other than to promote Scott Simpson to a role outside Cabinet following Andrew Bayly’s resignation.

The reshuffle applies to National Party ministers only, meaning ACT’s Brooke van Velden will continue in her portfolios despite her decision to retire from Parliament at the election.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Chris Penk and Penny Simmonds have been promoted to Cabinet, as the prime minister reshuffles his ministerial lineup.

The reshuffle also sees first-term MPs Cameron Brewer and Mike Butterick made ministers outside Cabinet.

The changes were necessitated by the upcoming retirement of Judith Collins, as well as Dr Shane Reti’s decision to stand down at the election.

Collins’ defence, space, and GCSB and NZSIS portfolios have been given to Penk, Paul Goldsmith takes on responsibility for the public service and digitising government, and Chris Bishop picks up the Attorney-General role.

Bishop’s position as Leader of the House has been given to Louise Upston.

Simmonds takes up Reti’s science, innovation, and technology portfolio, and his universities role has been disestablished to make Simmonds the minister for tertiary education.

She had previously been minister for vocational education, as well as environment. The latter has been given to Nicola Grigg, who remains outside Cabinet.

Brewer, who has been chairing Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee (a weighty role which often leads to a ministerial promotion) has been made minister of commerce and consumer affairs and minister for small business and manufacturing, while Butterick will become minister for Land Information.

Other changes include Simeon Brown picking up the energy portfolio from Simon Watts, who in turn takes over Brown’s minister for Auckland role.

Prime minister Christopher Luxon said the past few weeks had underline how important energy security was, and so was giving the role to a “senior” minister.

Luxon acknowledged Collins and Reti’s departures.

“New Zealand is better for Judith and Shane deciding to enter public service and I am grateful to count them both as friends. On behalf of the government and the National Party, I wish them all the best for their futures outside Parliament.”

The changes come into effect on Tuesday, 7 April.

Luxon had not reshuffled his lineup since January 2025, other than to promote Scott Simpson to a role outside Cabinet following Andrew Bayly’s resignation.

The reshuffle applies to National Party ministers only, meaning ACT’s Brooke van Velden will continue in her portfolios despite her decision to retire from Parliament at the election.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced a refreshed ministerial lineup to continue fixing the basics and protecting New Zealand’s future.

“New Zealanders are facing economic challenges brought on by conflict in the Middle East and its effect on fuel supply across the world,” says Christopher Luxon.

“Having a strong ministerial team with real-world experience to deliver our response is crucial. Today’s reshuffle reflects that and brings in new talent.

“Having successfully delivered significant reforms from outside Cabinet, Chris Penk will now join Cabinet, picking up the Defence, GCSB and NZSIS, and Space portfolios. Chris’ time in the NZDF leaves him well placed to lead the work our Government has done in raising the status and capability of our armed forces.

“Penny Simmonds also joins Cabinet with responsibility for Tertiary Education and Science, Innovation and Technology. Penny has successfully delivered reforms to the vocational education sector, also from outside Cabinet, and will bring her extensive governance experience to her new portfolios.

“The past few weeks have underlined how important energy security is and as such I will be elevating the Energy portfolio to senior minister Simeon Brown.

“Chris Bishop becomes Attorney-General and Paul Goldsmith takes responsibility for the Public Service and Digitising Government, and Pacific Peoples portfolios.

“Louise Upston will become Leader of the House and Simon Watts will be Minister for Auckland.

“Nicola Grigg becomes Minister for the Environment and Scott Simpson becomes Minister of Statistics and Deputy Leader of the House. 

“Joining as a Minister outside Cabinet, Cameron Brewer becomes Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and Small Business and Manufacturing, and Associate Minister of Immigration. Mike Butterick becomes Minister for Land Information and Associate Minister of Agriculture.

“Finally, I acknowledge the public service of Judith Collins and Shane Reti who, between them, have dedicated almost 40 years to representing their communities in Parliament.

“Judith was first elected in 2002 and since then, has held numerous different ministerial portfolios and served as Leader of the Opposition. This term, she has delivered the Defence Capability Plan, advanced New Zealand’s space industry and modernised of our public service.

“In Shane’s 12 years in Parliament, he has served as Deputy Leader of the Opposition and has delivered key reforms as a minister, including improving the commerciality of our science sector to boost incomes and create jobs. He has also played a key role in projects that will benefit New Zealanders for generations, like the third medical school and expanded cancer screening.  

“I would also like to acknowledge the staff who have supported Judith and Shane throughout their time here.

“New Zealand is better for Judith and Shane deciding to enter public service and I am grateful to count them both as friends. On behalf of the Government and the National Party, I wish them all the best for their futures outside Parliament.”

These changes will come into effect on Tuesday 7 April.

MIL OSI

NEW YORK, April 01, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Hall Chadwick Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: HCACU) (“HCAC”) and REEcycle Holdings, Inc. (“REEcycle”) today announced the execution of a non-binding Letter of Intent (“LOI”) for a proposed de-SPAC business combination.

The proposed transaction values REEcycle at approximately US$600 million, assuming no redemptions by HCAC public shareholders, with REEcycle existing shareholders expected to roll 100% of their equity into the combined publicly listed entity. The transaction is expected to include a minimum US$50 million PIPE financing at US$10.00 per share, providing committed capital at closing and supporting the execution of REEcycle’s near-term growth strategy.

The transaction comes at a pivotal time for U.S. critical minerals policy. China currently controls an estimated 90% of rare earth separation and processing and ~93% of permanent magnet manufacturing globally.¹ In response, the U.S. Government, through Department of Defense and Department of Energy initiatives, has committed billions of dollars to strengthening domestic critical mineral supply chains, including rare earth processing.² REEcycle has been awarded and is drawing upon US$5.1 million of Defense Production Act funding, supporting the advancement of its domestic rare earth processing capabilities.

REEcycle is advancing a technology-led solution to rare earth supply constraints. Its proprietary recycling process extracts and separates rare earth elements from end-of-life electronics and industrial products, offering a faster, lower-capex and scalable alternative to traditional mining. This approach enables near-term domestic supply while reducing exposure to geopolitical disruption.

The global rare earth market was valued at approximately US$19 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach ~US$36.7 billion by 2034, with recycling expected to grow at an accelerated rate as demand for domestically sourced materials increases.³

REEcycle’s Executive Chairman and largest shareholder is Mick McMullen, a highly respected mining executive with over 30 years of leadership experience across global mining and capital markets. He is best known for his tenure as President and CEO of Detour Gold Corporation, where he grew the company’s market capitalisation from C$2.1 billion to C$4.9 billion in nine months, culminating in its acquisition by Kirkland Lake Gold.⁴ His investment in REEcycle reflects strong conviction in recycling-led onshoring.

“We are addressing a critical U.S. supply gap with a faster and more capital-efficient solution than traditional mining, scalable across the U.S. and globally. This is both a technology opportunity and a national security priority.”

— Mick McMullen, Executive Chairman, REEcycle Holdings

Hall Chadwick Acquisition Corp. raised US$207 million in its Nasdaq IPO in November 2025 and is focused on transactions in critical minerals and industrial technology sectors.

“REEcycle represents a rare combination of proprietary technology, experienced leadership, and direct alignment with U.S. critical minerals strategy. We see this as a platform capable of becoming a meaningful domestic supplier, and we are excited to bring that opportunity to public investors.”

— Alex Bono, CEO, Hall Chadwick Acquisition Corp.

Exclusivity

The parties have agreed to a 60-day exclusivity period to undertake due diligence and negotiate a definitive Business Combination Agreement.

Non-Binding Letter of Intent

The LOI is non-binding and subject to the execution of definitive agreements, completion of due diligence, required approvals, and customary closing conditions. There can be no assurance that a transaction will be completed.

Important Information

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding the proposed business combination, including expected structure, financing, timing and benefits. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including the ability to execute definitive agreements, obtain approvals, satisfy closing conditions and maintain listing status. This press release does not constitute an offer or solicitation of securities. In connection with the proposed transaction, HCAC intends to file a registration statement on Form S-4 with the SEC. Investors are urged to review these materials when available at www.sec.gov. No obligation is undertaken to update forward-looking statements except as required by law.

1 CSIS, “China Rare Earth Restrictions,” 2025.
2 U.S. State Dept., “Critical Minerals Fact Sheet,” 2026.
3 Grand Research Store, “Rare Earth Market Report,” 2025
4 Globe and Mail, “Kirkland–Detour Gold deal,” 2019; Business Wire, “Kirkland Lake Gold acquisition,” 2019.

– Published by The MIL Network

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) spy agency has taken six times longer than it should have to address questions about lax cyber security identified in a Treasury report.

The report last year mentioned that government data was “being managed or held by unvetted third parties”.

It gave no details, so RNZ sought them.

Director-general Andrew Clark apologised for taking 120 working days to respond, instead of the statutory 20 under the Official Information Act (OIA).

He then refused to answer virtually all of the dozen questions.

Clark said they had to keep incidents and vulnerabilities confidential or people would not share with them, and they needed that information to counter threats.

The Treasury report said government agencies had continued to raise concerns about the security of third-party vendors’ products and services, including poor security controls and unpatched software.

“Some agencies reported that vendors had offshored some services without their prior approval, meaning government data was being managed or held by unvetted third parties,” said the quarterly investment report for the three months to December 2024. Such reports are released publicly many months after they are done.

New Zealand’s small size as a market was biting it, the report suggested.

“Agencies assess that poor service delivery is likely driven by lower competition and less resourcing for comparably smaller contracts in New Zealand versus larger markets,” it said, under the title ‘Other emerging … issues’.

“Low competition, coupled with poor service delivery from some vendors, has also led to high reliance by many Government agencies on the same few vendors, which creates risk to service delivery across the public sector should those vendors suffer a cyber security incident or event.”

Many government agencies had become increasingly reliant on cloud-computing services from US Big Tech companies.

RNZ asked the GCSB, National Cyber Security Centre and Internal Affairs who the problem vendors were. Clark in his response would not name them or say anything about them.

“Providing this information would likely have commercial implications for these vendors” so that was refused on the grounds of unreasonably prejudicing someone’s position.

What about the government agencies that had raised the alarm?

“I am refusing those parts of your request where you have asked for information that has been provided to the GCSB in confidence by agencies,” was the reply, otherwise it might prejudice the supply of such info in future.

The unvetted third parties were not disclosed, and neither were the risks to service delivery that Treasury had told ministers were in play.

The risks information was refused on the grounds the GCSB “does not hold this information in the manner or format you have requested”.

Work was underway on digital investment and procurement, Clark said.

Asked what measures were taken, he said the National Cyber Security Centre provided a range of advice, and they had recently developed “minimum cyber security standards” to focus on the basics and encourage good practices.

The subsequent three quarterly reports after this one did not mention the threat again.

But other weaknesses did come up in them, and in one case Treasury was called out for them, in the latest quarterly report, to September 2025.

It said many data and digital projects did not include information relating to cyber security management or improvement.

It went on to fault the Treasury’s investment management system because it did not recognise the ongoing cost of cyber security, “making it difficult” to upgrade old systems and move away from on-site hardware to ‘as-a-service’ tech “which we know deliver better security results”.

“The current financing rules and settings around capital and operating expenditure are preventing agencies from modernising and improving their cyber security.”

Agencies’ approach to procuring IT systems or services was called “outdated and fragmented” by the government chief digital officer in the September quarterly report, six years after Treasury told the public sector to take an all-of-government approach to try to cut the IT upgrade bill of multi-billions of dollars.

The long wait for the response to the OIA request was put down by the GCSB to consultation and the “volume of information requested” by RNZ.

Most of Clark’s three-page response was taken up outlining the grounds for refusing the information.

RNZ asked for any report that focused on the threat, but did not get one.

Clark apologised for the wait.

“Our response … did not meet the statutory deadline and I do apologise for that. Thank you for your patience while we completed our response.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand