Guyon Espiner

It's worth noting, I guess, though, that this particular one, the law enforcement one, means that New Zealand police find themselves part of an interagency network that includes not just the FBI, but also ICE, the very controversial American Immigration and Custom Enforcement Agency.

Again, these systems have existed under governments from both left and right.

Yeah, and we've seen recently with news of the death of a New Zealand SAS soldier training alongside US Special Forces in Papakura that we are very tight on defence.

Kit Bennett says the ties that bind us to our partners are vital and they're pulled together by the people on the ground.

Former Soviet ambassador turned defence and security academic, Professor Ruben Azizian, has seen some turmoil in his time.

And when we spoke with him in November of 2025, he was relatively sanguine about the situation with the US.

And he says in that sense, it's more likely that Five Eyes will evolve in another direction because they've got a common concern with the rising superpower.

There are, in fact, already extensions to Five Eyes.

There's Nine Eyes.

They cooperate on signals intelligence.

That's the Five Eyes plus Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway.

Professor Izizian says New Zealand needs to push forward some of its own natural advantages.

Ruben Azizian says that while there's an agreement in place between the Five Eyes not to spy on each other, everyone else is fair game.

But at the same time, Ruben Azizian says that as a democracy, we need a more open and transparent discussion around foreign policy rather than keeping it inside the corridors of power.

And that's been the case for too long.

He says issues like Pillar 2 of AUKUS, the defence alliance between three of our Five Eyes partners, including our closest ally Australia, these really need to be discussed in public and not just hammered out behind closed doors.

We put this to Andrew Little, who was the Minister for the Intelligence Agencies and Minister of Defence as recently as 2023.

For clarity, John's talking here about our previous podcast series, The Service.

That was about a Cold War raid on the Czech embassy, carried out by Britain's MI6 and New Zealand's SIS, also known as The Service.

Yeah, and in the SIS Act, there is a clause which says that they're allowed to lie.