3. Cyberattacks
Eric Geller 23. Journalist covering cybersecurity and technology. His stories have explored efforts to protect elections from hackers, take down cybercrime gangs, improve the security of commercial and open-source software, and regulate vital U.S. infrastructure. He spent more than six years as a cyber reporter at Politico; prior to that, he covered tech policy and served as an editor at The Daily Dot. "The Dangerous Weak Link in the US Food Chain". WIRED. 4-6-2023. https://www.wired.com/story/us-food-agriculture-isac-cybersecurity/
IF HACKERS WANTED to debilitate American society, they would have trouble taking down the entire power grid or financial system, but they could do serious damage to the companies that make and deliver Americans’ food.
The US food and agriculture sector lacks the resources, expertise, and government support to protect itself and its products from a rapidly expanding range of cybersecurity threats, according to lawmakers, policy experts, and former government officials. These shortfalls leave gaps that foreign government operatives or cybercriminals could exploit to remotely disable farming equipment, contaminate fertilizer, cripple milk supplies, and kill chickens.
In the past few years, cyberattacks on the meat processing giant JBS Foods and the Iowa farm services firm NEW Cooperative have laid bare the industry’s widespread vulnerabilities. And new technologies, including advances in artificial intelligence, are creating previously unimaginable risks, overwhelming a workforce not accustomed to dealing with digital security. Making matters worse, food and agriculture is one of only a few critical infrastructure sectors that doesn’t have an information sharing and analysis center, or ISAC, helping companies fight back.
All of these shortcomings make food and agriculture companies a prime target for Russian operatives bent on vengeance for Western sanctions, Chinese spies seeking a competitive advantage for their domestic firms, and ransomware gangs looking for victims that can’t afford downtime.
The federal government has recently begun addressing these dangers. Lawmakers are introducing bills and spotlighting the issue at hearings, and a presidential directive has spawned a series of reports and reviews. To the people most informed and worried about the chaos that hackers could cause, these developments are long overdue.
“Agricultural and food security is the foundation of American security,” says US congressman August Pfluger, a Texas Republican who has sponsored a bill on the subject. “Without a stable food supply, society stops functioning.”