'One day an Australian will be killed': ASIO boss's chilling warning

Australia’s top domestic spy chief delivered an emphatic warning about the dangers the country faces last night, encapsulated in one grim line.

“When an Australian is killed at the hands of a foreign government on Australian soil, we will be shocked – but we should not be surprised,” ASIO director general Mike Burgess said.

Online radicalisation, rising antisemitism, cyber-warfare, coercion of citizens, and state-sponsored terrorism all pose a major ongoing threat to both Australian lives and the Australian way of life, as outlined in Burgess’s Annual Threat Assessment address for 2026.

“In last year’s Threat Assessment, we declassified part of ASIO’s outlook to 2030. I warned we were entering a period of strategic surprise and security fragility, and predicted the threat environment would become more dynamic, diverse and degraded by the end of the decade,” Burgess said.

“Unfortunately, we are already there.”

While Australia’s terror threat level remains at “probably”, Burgess said this did not encompass the scale of the threats faced.

“The next level on the scale is ‘expected’, which applies when we have intelligence about a specific attack. We do not,” he said.

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“But we do know the environment is degrading and acts of politically motivated violence are becoming more likely than ‘probable’ suggests.”

He said while the Bondi Beach terror attack had prompted calls for a greater focus on Sunni extremism, terror attacks were now being planned by people from multiple ideologies.

“Instead of embracing fixed ideologies, radicalised individuals are increasingly embracing mixed ideologies,” Burgess said.

Additionally, the radicalisation process was more likely now to take place online, with anonymous strangers rather than trusted associates and peers.

In particular, Burgess highlighted increasing antisemitism, which he pointed out was a hateful common factor across numerous potentially violent ideologies, including Islamic extremism, far-right nationalism, conspiracy theorists, and far-left anarchism.

“My point is that violent antisemitism is not a single, or simple, intelligence problem,” he said.

“The firebombing of a synagogue can simultaneously be criminal arson, foreign interference, the promotion of communal violence and politically motivated violence,” he said.

“And when Iran directs the arson, it’s an act of state-sponsored terrorism.”

Iran was the only foreign country Burgess named in his address, though he spoke of increasing interference by multiple international actors.

He warned Iran was likely to make more attacks on Australian soil, after ASIO established that the country’s Revolutionary Guard had orchestrated multiple antisemitic incidents through Australia-linked overseas criminals.

He revealed for the first time that the arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne had been orchestrated on behalf of Iran by a former Australian resident now living in Iraq, who had since been jailed.

“Thankfully, no one died as a result of the arson attacks. But I do worry that one day an Australian will be killed at the hands of a foreign government here in Australia,” Burgess said.

“My concern is only heightened by the possibility the Iran-backed group conducting attacks in Europe could expand its operations, including to Australia.”

But Iran was not the only international threat.

Burgess said he was after of at least five overseas governments who carried out operations of coercion and threats to residents and citizens in Australia in order to lure them overseas or silence them from speaking out.

One man, he said, had been the target of a 10-year operation that involved threats to his family still living overseas.

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Other countries, even ones Australia considered “friendly”, were also active in areas like cyber warfare and gleaning information about the AUKUS defence pact.

Many of the operations and incidents Burgess spoke of, he said, were gleaned from one week’s worth of entries in his notebook.

“It might sound like ‘one of those weeks’ but at ASIO every week is one of those weeks,” he said.

But he chose to end the speech on a more upbeat note, saying Australia was prepared to meet these threats on every front.

“Our parliaments are sovereign, our communities are resilient, our economy is growing and while we may not be perfect, our security and law enforcement agencies are world class,” he said.

“We should not be insecure about our security: we can and should have confidence in our ability to respond.

“But in a dynamic, diverse and degraded security environment – that confidence is being tested.”