Australia’s top spy chief has called on social media companies to not use harmful algorithms to target vulnerable children as the risk of extremism increases.
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation director general Mike Burgess warned of a rising tide of children being targeting by extremist content online during his annual threat assessment speech.
Minors were particularly vulnerable to radicalisation with AI-fuelled online algorithms making it easier to find extremist material and the digital world influencing some children more than the real world.
Calling for large tech companies with work with authorities, Mr Burgess said they needed to “step up to the plate” and act responsibility by stopping harmful algorithms.
“I hope they want that for their child,” he said.
ASIO disrupted five terror plots in 2024 and of all the potential terrorist matters investigated in that year, almost all involved minors, he said.
Young people could be radicalised online very quickly and a generation of digital natives are entering a vulnerable age, Mr Burgess said.
“Radicalised minors can pose the same credible terrorist threat as adults,” he said.
This was exacerbated by the impacts of social media, mental health and the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories, Mr Burgess said.
Nationalist and racist violence extremists were expected to expand their movement and “undertake provocative, offensive and increasingly high-profile acts to generate publicity and recruit,” he said.
“I remain concerned about young Australians being caught up in webs of hate,” he said.
Mr Burgess also revealed ASIO had intervened to stop foreign agents luring a person overseas where they planned to injure or kill them.
The plan to arrange an “accident” was foiled when the intelligence agency helped stop the travel.
At least three nations had conspired to harm people in Australia and at least four plotted coerced repatriations, where people in Australia are extensively pressured to return to their country of birth, Mr Burgess said.
Sabotage and espionage remain major risks to national security and the threat level isn’t expected to decrease in the foreseeable future, the spy chief said.
“We are likely to have more security surprises in the second half of the decade than we did in the first,” he added.
This includes one hostile nation constantly prodding Australian critical infrastructure to explore and exploit possible vulnerabilities or install malware they can use to gain access in the future.
“Consider yourself warned,” he told a room full of intelligence officials, law enforcement officers and diplomats, including the Chinese ambassador while spruiking ASIO’s capabilities.
https://thewest.com.au/politics/consider-yourself-warned-asio-details-extremism-rise-c-17782587
