Guyon Espiner

Yeah, basically the foreign policy establishment, while the opposition, they were made up of what's called other worlders, media, academics, most politicians and a large part of the public who are sceptical of American power and who see New Zealand as non-aligned.

Now obviously this analysis was never supposed to be made public, and there was a fair bit of moaning about it as a meaninglessly shallow characterisation, but in some ways it is a useful shorthand, and that division goes to the fact that while many in New Zealand have been sceptical of American power for decades now, we do remain very much part of the American sphere of influence.

Yeah, those are the extremes.

The lines here are a bit more blurred or perhaps nuanced than you might imagine.

Here's Kit Bennett again, this time talking about one of the prime ministers under whom he served in the 1980s when we were supposedly breaking up with the Americans over our anti-nuclear policy.

And that might well have been a reference to the story of the Czech embassy raid that we covered in the service.

But Andrew Little does sound a note of caution in terms of how we deal with the Trump regime.

He's echoing criticism around mission creep that was made by the former Prime Minister Helen Clark and others.

That sense that the Five Eyes has been quietly expanding its remit into foreign affairs and defence.

But you have to ask how realistic is that?

Is it possible to have an intelligence gathering network that stops at the door of foreign affairs and the military?

Yeah, then there's the Critical Five.

That's Five Eyes members collaborating on critical infrastructure.

And during the early days of COVID, the Five Eyes were working together on health outcomes.

There's another one I came across too, and I hadn't heard of this until I started looking into this podcast.

It's called FALEG.

I've never heard it said out loud, but I presume that that's how you say it.

It stands for Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group.

Now, again, mutual national security interests based on trust that comes from this longstanding alliance.

And as you see, the tentacles are spread rather wide.