Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
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What is agroterrorism and why is it a concern?
Welcome back to the Bites and Bites podcast, where food, technology, and cybersecurity collide. I'm your host, Kristen Demiranville, and today we're talking about a topic that's both urgent and very unsettling, agroterrorism. Farms are being targeted by cyber criminals, radical activists and bad actors looking to disrupt food production. While this is well known within agriculture, it's largely overlooked outside of it. Before we begin today, a quick listener advisory. In this episode, we will discuss uncomfortable topics, including terrorism. animal harm, radical activism, radical veganism, extreme groups, and cult-like behaviors. Listener discretion is advised. With that, let's jump into the conversation.
Well, we have a very interesting episode today. It's a little bit off of the norm, I would say, for Bites and Bites. We're going to talk about agroterrorism. But before we do all that and define it so the listeners understand what it is and what it's not, I'm going to go around the room and introduce the experts I have. And I'm very excited because once again, we have Andrew Rose.
Who are the experts discussing agroterrorism?
Andrew, just quickly introduce yourself and then we'll go around the room.
Absolutely. And thank you again for having me here. It's always an honor to be here both virtually and in person on stage in Montreal. It was a blast as well. I am an agricultural futurist. I focused on these projects that will benefit our species three generations from now on a world as it will be to ensure that they have the food they need to survive and flourish. And then for the past almost nine years now, I've worked in protecting our ag supply chain from cyber criminals and related threats. And I'm really excited about the co-guests that we have here today. These are some of the best in the world, in my opinion.
That's great. Hannah, do you want to introduce yourself? Hi, everyone. Hannah Thompson-Wieman. I'm president and CEO of the Animal Agriculture Alliance. We are a nonprofit working to safeguard the future of animal agriculture and its value to society by bridging the communication gap between the farm and food communities. Everything we do falls in the areas of connect, so connecting stakeholders from across animal agriculture and the food chain. Engage, so engaging with key influencers on hot topics like animal welfare, sustainability, responsible antibiotic use. And then lastly, the juicy stuff, protect. which is our monitoring of adversarial groups out there. So individuals and organizations that just don't believe there's a way to ethically and responsibly raise animals for food and are working very fervently to try to advance that mindset using a variety of different tactics, including some that would fall in the realm of what we're going to be talking about here today.
So monitoring those groups and informing the industry about security management and other ways that we can make sure that we're protecting our livelihoods. The alliance has been around since 1987. So we have quite a bit of history in this area and we're based in the D.C. area. Great. Thanks, Hannah. Appreciate that. And last but not least, Mike.
Hey guys, my name is Michael Urbanik. I'm an insurance agent with Arcade Tongue, over a hundred year old brokerage just out of Baltimore. I live down in the Richmond area, but you know, where I fit in all this is working with clients, businesses, understanding what risks do they face and Any business has a myriad of risks and they only keep evolving and then helping them finding ways to transfer that risk, whether it's via traditional insurance programs, self-retention groups, self-insuring to make sure that they're geared up facing all the threats that avail them. So, yeah, excited to be here.
Thank you all. And in tradition with Bites and Bites, we're going to go around the room and talk about our current food fixation and our favorite food memory to date. Hannah, I will start with you.
So my current hyper fixation is we have a house guest staying with us right now from Spain. And she brought us these chocolate bars is way underselling. In Spanish, it's called Tron. But I don't really know what that exactly translates to. But it's like the fanciest chocolate bar. And she knows that I love Oreos. So she found an Oreo one.
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