Protecting Critical Infrastructure
FBI Agriculture Threats Symposium in Nebraska highlights safety measures to safeguard the nation’s critical food infrastructure
NASA satellite image of farmland in Minnesota
More than 400 farmers, cybersecurity experts, and policymakers from 30 states gathered in Nebraska recently to learn about threats to the nation’s food and biofuel pipelines and how to protect against them.
Speakers at the FBI’s second annual Agriculture Threats Symposium in Omaha described how farmers and ranchers today are more digitally connected than ever, using precision farming tools like GPS and automation to produce higher yields more efficiently. But technological advances that have supercharged the nation’s agriculture sector—from small family farms to industrial-scale packing plants—have also created vulnerabilities.
"Wherever in the country you may live—from California to Nebraska to Georgia to points in between—the cyber risk and the national security risk for farms and ranches and our food processing facilities is growing exponentially," said Gene Kowel, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Omaha Field Office, which partnered with the Nebraska Farm Bureau to host the August 12 symposium. "The threats are evolving. They’re becoming more complex and more severe."
Examples shared during the daylong event included ransomware attacks that cripple operations, network hacks that take control of systems, and the theft of seeds worth millions of dollars in intellectual property and research.
Kowel said the FBI is monitoring four major threats to the nation’s agriculture sector, which—like water, power, and transportation—is considered part of the nation’s critical infrastructure. The threats include ransomware attacks, malicious software (malware) from foreign adversaries, theft of data and intellectual property, and bioterrorism.
Foreign actors—most notably the People’s Republic of China—are actively seeking ways to disrupt the United States’ agriculture industry, Kowel said. He urged farmers, cattle ranchers, and others to add cyber hygiene to their long list of chores. Cyber hygiene includes basic steps like using multi-factor authentication to access networks and backing up critical data.
"We all know that in agriculture today, almost all of our data is stored in the cloud," Kowel said. "Almost all of our complex machinery is connected to the internet, connected to the cloud, so protecting that control and protecting that data is critical."
"Almost all of our complex machinery is connected to the internet, connected to the cloud, so protecting that control and protecting that data is critical."
Gene Kowel, special agent in charge, FBI Omaha
Mark McHargue, president of the Nebraska Farm Bureau, which represents more than 55,000 farming and ranching families, said security isn't talked about nearly enough in his circles. Farmers are busy, he said, but gatherings like the symposium help refocus attention to what is essentially a national security issue.
"A lot of times, when I talk to farmers about cybersecurity, their eyes glaze over," McHargue said. "But that’s the reason these types of events are important."
Agriculture in Nebraska is a $30 billion industry, McHargue said, and the country’s Midwest economy is the fifth largest economy in the world. Hiccups anywhere along the way—a shutdown of a meatpacking plant or disabling of a farm cooperative, for example—can create huge ripples downstream.
FBI Omaha Special Agent in Charge Gene Kowel chats with American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall and Nebraska Farm Bureau President Mark McHargue at the Agriculture Threats Symposium on August 12 in Omaha, Nebraska. The FBI and the Nebraska Farm Bureau hosted the event for the second year in a row.
"If there’s a disruption in the ag sector to any degree, it affects rural life in Nebraska, in the Midwest, and the country because our towns and our communities are so tied to agriculture," McHargue said. "If agriculture blinks, our rural communities are going to blink."
Just last year, six grain cooperatives in the region were targets of cyberattacks and forced to temporarily shut down, Special Agent in Charge Kowel said, adding that another farm recently suffered $9 million in damages and had to cease operations.
Elsewhere, a ransomware attack in 2021 attributed to Russia shut down one of the world’s largest meatpacking plants. The FBI can cite multiple cases of thefts of rice and corn seeds by Chinese nationals who pretended to be tourists or researchers but were actually committing economic espionage on behalf of the People’s Republic of China.
"This is not a time for us to be alarmed. But it is a time for us to inform ourselves and prepare ourselves."
Zippy Duvall, president, American Farm Bureau Federation
Earlier this year, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that China presents a significant threat to the country’s critical infrastructure, as evidenced by the Bureau’s Volt Typhoon investigation that revealed the Chinese government had gained access to networks within multiple sectors of U.S. infrastructure.
"The [People’s Republic of China] has made it clear that it considers every sector that makes our society run as fair game in its bid to dominate on the world stage," Wray said in April, "and that its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic and break America’s will to resist."
The Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Threat Assessment 2024 report says foreign and domestic adversaries will continue to threaten the integrity of U.S. critical infrastructure over the next year "in part because they perceive targeting these sectors would have cascading impacts on U.S. industries and the American way of life."
Organizers in Omaha were glad to see so many attendees. They encouraged everyone to share what they learned, no matter if they are large farm bureaus emailing members or family farm operators just talking to neighbors. Kowel said the event is instrumental in helping the Bureau build relationships with the agriculture sector and for farmers to cultivate relationships with one another.
More than 400 people form 30 states attended the second annual symposium.
"The number-one thing that we’re doing today is building partnerships and building pathways to sharing intelligence and information," Kowel said. "In America, the government doesn't control critical infrastructure. Most of the critical infrastructure in our country is controlled by the private sector. And the only way that we can protect it is by working together with the private sector in a partnership."
Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit representing farmers from all 50 states and Puerto Rico, said he was heartened by the turnout given that there’s always work to be done on the farm.
"I know how hard it is to break away from your farm and come volunteer to be here today," Duvall said to attendees. "You have a busy schedule. But this is a core issue—one that could bring our country to its knees. This is not a time for us to be alarmed. But it is a time for us to inform ourselves and prepare ourselves."