State actors are colluding with criminals to carry out foreign interference, sabotage, and terrorism in a challenge to Australian law enforcement, AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett has warned.
Addressing the ANU National Security College, Ms Barrett said terrorists or state actors and criminals had previously undertaken “separate lines of criminality” and with different motivations.
“But, increasingly in Europe and Five Eyes countries, including Australia, persons of interest in organised crime matters are being linked to state actors and their proxies,” Ms Barrett said.
“In effect, state actors are increasingly capitalising on existing criminal underworld connections, especially those who share ethnicity or ideology, to carry out offences such as foreign interference, sabotage, or terrorism.”
Ms Barrett said the “collision and collusion” between criminals and state actors was a product of new asymmetrical warfare, the growing cost of conflicts, and challenges to the rules-based order – as well as “good old-fashioned opportunism”.
“Our diabolical reality, particularly in Western countries, is that individual offenders or networks are now willing to carry out serious crimes for despots, dictators and disrupters,” Ms Barrett said.
She warned the motivation of some criminals was becoming “very opaque”, with some not even knowing who they were being paid by to “vandalise or destroy places of faith” or create fear and disharmony in communities.
Others do so for the benefit of working for a state actor, including that state turning a blind eye to illicit trafficking, Ms Barrett warned.
She did not directly name any foreign actor.
However, the Australian government has previously accused Iran of orchestrating attacks on Australia’s Jewish community.
Chinese nationals have also been charged in recent months with foreign interference over allegations they were spying on an Australian Buddhist group.
They have indicated they will fight the charges.
Ms Barrett said state actors turned to criminals because they were willing and well spread, offered “plausible deniability”, and were available for cheap and at a lower risk.
“This has been previously explained as crime as a service – but that is just half the story,” she said.
“The convergence can become more challenging for law enforcement to identify, and it also has the potential to confuse and instil fear in the public.”
Offences such as vandalism, investigated through a law enforcement lens, could be more than it seemed, Ms Barrett said.
A growing number of cases overseas was also a “warning sign to Australia”, she added.
Striking a confident tone, Ms Barrett said AFP, ASIO and commonwealth partners were sharing intelligence and evidence.
She said the ANU’s Community Consultations Initiative report, which found public anxiety was high and rising, was instructive.
The July 2025 survey found 68 per cent of respondents considered it more likely than not that the nation would be involved in military conflict with another country within five years.
