Radicalised online, teenager who planned Sydney terror attack tells court he used AI to strategise
From TikTok to violent content
RK had just turned 14 when the offending took place in 2024. He told the court that TikTok was where he first encountered extremist material. In his judgment, Campbell said RK moved on to videos about the September 11, 2001 attacks and subsequent wars. Religious-themed videos then led him to increasingly violent content, before he began discussing such subjects with people online.
Online searches and contacts
RK used Telegram to look for instructions on making a pressure cooker bomb and tried to contact Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Marathon bomber, by email. Campbell said RK emailed the prison using a publicly available address to ask if he could write to Tsarnaev, but never made contact. Campbell said RK shared Islamic State videos on Telegram to seek validation, because he thought doing so was “cool.” The teenager also used ChatGPT to devise his plans.
Remorse and online risks
The teenager has since expressed remorse. Campbell said RK completed six sessions of religious and ethical training with a Muslim cleric. Claire McGuinness, ASIO’s deputy director general for intelligence service delivery, told a parliamentary inquiry last month that identifying and disrupting online youth radicalisation had become very challenging. She said algorithms can narrow users’ feeds and shift content from fringe material toward content relevant to security agencies.
Key points
- RK was 14 when he planned the attack in Sydney in 2024.
- He said extremist material on TikTok was his first exposure to it.
- He searched Telegram for bomb-making instructions and used ChatGPT to devise plans.
- ASIO official Claire McGuinness described online youth radicalisation as increasingly difficult to detect and disrupt.