NewYou can listen to Fox News articles now!
Director of the FBI Kash Patel A visit to New Zealand over the weekend, where the bureau’s new office was launched, saying the country was a key partner with China to combat Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
Patel said the International Field Office is the legal weapon office and is the first such office to be opened in decades. The FBI has more than 60 offices around the world, aiming to focus on international threats and intelligence building.
Patel FBI New Zealand Office priorities.
“Some of the most important global issues of our times are the ones that New Zealand and America work on together, countering the CCP (Chinese influence) in the INDOPACOM theatre, countering the narcotics trade, working against cyber intrusions and ransomware operations, and most importantly, protecting our respective citizenry here in New Zealand, at home in America and across the world,” Patel said in a statement.
FBI Director Kash Patel visited New Zealand in August 2025. (Kash Patel/X)
The Five Eyes Alliance is a global group for decades, composed of five countries that share intelligence with each other for national security purposes. In addition to the United States and New Zealand, it also includes the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. According to New Zealand’s pressure to be more in line with the United States in China, while also maintaining balance with Beijing. Associated Press.
China expressed doubts about the FBI’s announcement in its speech on Friday, saying it did not support the two countries in joining forces with a third country.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said: “Seeking so-called absolute security by forming a group under the banner of anti-China will not help maintain greater peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and the world.”
New Zealand Communications Security Minister Judith Collins said the FBI’s presence would help with crime.
Patel has been in the past month since January
New Zealand Defense Minister Judith Collins. (AP)
“I think it’s about the growing impact of transnational crime we’re seeing, the major drug traffickers in the Pacific, but also the interference on the state; especially when I look at some kind of behavior that we know of as gun-type behavior (in the Pacific),” Collins said, “We have only similar problems and we have to get along with it.”
FBI Director Kash Patel spoke at the swearing-in ceremony in Washington, D.C. on February 21, 2025. (Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Click here to get the Fox News app
From the competition China To achieve technological advances, prosecutions may have examples of espionage and raise concerns about China’s ownership of a small portion of U.S. farmland, and the U.S. government shows greater concern about China’s impact on numerous fronts.
China is also the driving force behind the opioid crisis in the United States. The Drug Enforcement Bureau discovered in 2020 that the influx of illegal drugs in the country mainly originated in China.
