Sydney teen receives community corrections order for planned terrorist attack

Teen tells court TikTok, YouTube and ChatGPT figured in planning

The New South Wales Supreme Court placed a 16-year-old, known by the pseudonym RK because of his age, on a three-year community corrections order on Monday for acts in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act in Sydney in 2024. The teenager pleaded guilty. Justice Stephen Campbell said RK had just turned 14 when the offending occurred. The ruling avoided a jail sentence while detailing the teenager’s progression from online extremist content to research of bomb-making methods and potential targets.

Campbell said RK initially viewed historical content that may have had a political theme, including videos about the Crusaders and “their empires,” before watching videos about the events of September 11, 2001, and the resulting war on terror and wars after it. Religious-themed videos then led RK to “other content of increasing violence,” after which he began discussing the subjects with people online, the judge said. RK told the court he was trying to impress those people.

While trying to impress those people, RK became focused on the Sydney Opera House as a potential location for violence, according to his account to the court. He asked ChatGPT about security arrangements at the venue, watched YouTube videos about it and researched gay nightclubs and other places where, in the court’s wording, “infidels” gather. The Sydney marathon finishes at the Opera House, and the court noted that terrorists were imprisoned in NSW.

RK used Telegram to seek instructions on making a pressure cooker bomb and looked for bomb-making videos on YouTube. He told the court he felt radicalized and “brainwashed by propaganda” after beginning that research. Campbell said RK had no concrete plans for committing a terrorist act and had not obtained any material for bomb-making.

ChatGPT was used for information about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston marathon bomber, and on whether inmates had access to news. Campbell said in his judgment, “Exhibiting what appears to me to be a complete lack of understanding of the import of his conduct, the young person emailed the prison, using a publicly available email address, asking whether he could email Tsarnaev,” adding that RK never ultimately made contact with the bomber.

The judgment also recorded that RK did more than consume Islamic State material on Telegram. He sent Islamic State videos to others to “seek validation” because he thought it was “cool,” Campbell said. He used Telegram to seek bomb-making instructions, and he attempted to contact Tsarnaev by email.

RK has since expressed remorse for his actions and underwent six sessions of religious and ethical training with a Muslim cleric, Campbell said. The judge said: “I fully accept he was radicalised to a degree, but that the process of deradicalisation is well advanced.” Campbell also said: “I am satisfied that he has genuinely renounced his adherence to Islamic violent extremism, which in any event was incipient and hesitant during the short period of his offending.”

OpenAI, Telegram and YouTube were approached for comment, while TikTok declined to comment. No response from OpenAI, Telegram or YouTube was reported.

The case comes as Claire McGuinness, Asio deputy director general for intelligence service delivery, told a parliamentary inquiry last month that detecting and disrupting online youth radicalization had become very challenging for the security agency.

She said the process usually begins quietly, as a young person scrolls through Instagram, TikTok or a similar platform and encounters something that catches their attention, perhaps a political meme or a religiously conservative video.

McGuinness said engagement can cause a feed to tighten and shift content toward security-relevant material. “At first it isn’t terrorism – it’s just fringe; it is extremist-adjacent. But, the moment they engage, the algorithm takes over and so the feed tightens, the content shifts from conservative to radical, and from radical to security-relevant.”

From there, McGuinness said teenagers often move to platforms such as Discord or Telegram, where “dark humour and the edgy memes” groom them to accept progressively more extreme content before passive consumption turns to active engagement in researching methods. In RK’s case, Campbell said the teenager had no concrete plan and had not obtained bomb-making material.

The New South Wales Supreme Court’s outcome was a community corrections order rather than jail time. The judgment described extensive online conduct by RK, but Campbell said the teenager had no concrete plan and had obtained no bomb-making material.