Fighting foreign interference is less straightforward than combating terrorism, said Ait Daoud, who spent three years at the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism before taking on his new role.
“If someone wants to commit a terrorist act, they usually are ideologically motivated,” he said. “They move around in those circles, talk a certain way, are looking for explosives or firearms. All of that is visible.”
Intelligence operations, by contrast, take place in a “gray zone between war and peace,” he said, much of it online. Intelligence and media reports point to Telegram, a messaging platform popular in Russia, as a key recruitment tool.
In a high-profile case in September, Ait Daoud’s team was involved in the arrest of three 17-year-olds in connection with what prosecutors say was a Russian-directed plot.
The teenagers are suspected of trying to map internet traffic around key sites in The Hague using a device known as a “Wi-Fi sniffer,” allegedly on orders from a Russian state-linked hacking group. According to Dutch media, targets included the Canadian embassy and the offices of Europol and Eurojust.
Ait Daoud declined to comment on the case directly, but said it illustrates a broader concern: that many of the people carrying out such operations are “not necessarily hardened criminals or professional spies.”