The FBI director opens a New Zealand office targeting Chinese security threats

FBI director Kash Patel went to New Zealand during the weekend to launch the new office office there, saying that the country was a crucial partner to fight Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Patel said that international Field Office, known as the legal attaché office, was the first office of this type to open for decades. The FBI has more than 60 offices around the world designed to focus on international threats and the construction of information.

Freshly out of a meeting with five Eyes partners in the region, Patel presented the priorities of the FBI New Zealand office.

“Some of the most important global problems of our time are those on which New Zealand and America work together, thwarting the PCC (Chinese influence) in the theater of Indopacom, by contravening the drug trade, working against cyber-intruders and in ransomware, and above all, protecting our respective citizenship here in New Zealand, in the world in America and around the world.” Patel said in a statement.

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FBI director Kash Patel, visits New Zealand in August 2025. (Kash Patel / X)

The Five Eyes Alliance is a world group several decades from five countries that share information between them for national security purposes. In addition to the United States and New Zealand, it includes the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. New Zealand has been faced with pressure to line up more closely with the United States on China while also balancing its own relationship with Beijing, according to The Associated Press.

On Friday, China challenged the FBI’s announcement in the remarks, saying that it did not support the two countries that combine against a third country.

“The so-called absolute security research by forming small groups under the banner of the China does not help to keep Asia-Pacific and the world in general peaceful and stable,” said spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guo Jiakun.

Judith Collins, Minister of the New Zealand Communication Security Office, said the presence of the FBI would contribute to crime.

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Judith Collins, Minister of New Zealand Defense. (AP)

“I think this is the transnational crime we see, the growing influence of the main drug traffickers across the Pacific, but also interference in countries; systems, especially when I look at some of the types of types of firearms that we know (in) the Pacific,” said Collins, adding that “it is just reality that we have similar problems.

The director of the FBI, Kash Patel, speaks during a swearing ceremony in Washington, DC, on February 21, 2025. (Will Oliver / EPA / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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From the race against China to achieve technological advances to possible spying prosecution and to raise concerns about the ownership of China of a small fraction of American agricultural land, the American government has reported an increased concern for Chinese influence on many fronts.

China was also an engine of the opioid crisis in the United States. The Drug Encompement Administration noted in 2020 that the flow of illicit drugs in the country came mainly from China.