Ep. 028 - Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
Hannah Thompson-Weeman – President & CEO of the Animal Agriculture Alliance,
Michael Urbanik – Insurance and risk management expert at R.K. Tongue Co., Inc
Andrew Rose-AgFuturist and an advisor to BIO-ISAC
📢 Listener Advisory: This episode discusses unsettling topics, including terrorism, animal harm, cult-like groups, radical activism, and threats to food security. Listener discretion is advised.
What happens when terrorism targets the food we eat? In this eye-opening episode of Bites and Bytes Podcast, we explore agroterrorism—the deliberate targeting of farms, livestock, and food supply chains to incite fear, economic damage, or ideological change.
Joining host Kristin Demoranville are three leading experts in agriculture, risk management, and security:
👩🌾 Hannah Thompson-Weeman – President & CEO of the Animal Agriculture Alliance, Hannah is a leading voice in protecting animal agriculture from activist threats and misinformation. She has dedicated her career to connecting the food supply chain and defending farms against radical actors.
📜 Michael Urbanik – Insurance and risk management expert at R.K. Tongue Co., Inc., Michael works closely with businesses to understand their vulnerabilities and create protection strategies against emerging threats, including agroterrorism and cybercrime.
🌎 Andrew Rose - A Bites and Bytes Podcast repeat guest, Andrew is a visionary AgFuturist and cybersecurity strategist. He is focused on mitigating threats to agriculture that are generations ahead of their time. As an advisor to BIO-ISAC and an expert in food and climate security, he brings a crucial perspective on the evolving risks to our food systems.
🛑 Who should listen?
Farmers & Ranchers – Protect your livelihood from security threats.
Food Industry Professionals – Learn about supply chain risks and disruptions.
Cybersecurity & Risk Experts – Understand the intersection of cybercrime and agriculture.
Policy Makers & Regulators – Gain insights into the evolving threats to food security.
Concerned Consumers – Get a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to keep our food supply safe.
🔍 In this episode, we discuss:
What agroterrorism is (and what it isn’t)
How extremist groups are infiltrating farms and food supply chains
The role of cyberattacks in disrupting agriculture
The impact of activism, misinformation, and social engineering on food production
Best practices for protecting farms and food systems
Real-world examples of agroterrorist incidents and their consequences
Food security is national security. Join us for a gripping discussion on why agriculture is under attack—and what we can do to defend it.
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Episode Key Highlights
(0:08:09) - What is Agroterrorism?
(0:11:56) - Economic and Social Impact
(0:16:42) - Detection Challenges
(0:19:16) - Cybersecurity’s Role
(0:23:36) - Radical Activism
(0:25:03) - Protective Measures for Farmers
(0:29:20) - Do We Have the Right Skills?
(0:33:38) - Real Agroterrorism Cases
(0:38:59) - Cyberbullying & Threats
(0:42:22) - Mental Health Toll
(0:50:20) - How Cyber Experts Can Help
(1:00:15) - Final Thoughts
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Show Notes:
FBI Definition of Agroterrorism:
Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA)
Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act:
https://www.congress.gov/109/plaws/publ374/PLAW-109publ374.pdf
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Listen to full episode :
Episode Guide:
(0:00:22) - Introduction and Listener Advisory
(0:01:38) - Guest Introductions: Andrew Rose
(0:02:13) - Guest Introductions: Hannah Thompson-Weeman
(0:03:28) - Guest Introductions: Michael Urbanik
(0:03:59) - Favorite Food Fixations and Memories
(0:08:09) - What is Agroterrorism? Defining the Threat
(0:09:03) - The Role of the FBI and Government in Defining Agroterrorism
(0:11:56) - How Agroterrorism Impacts the Agriculture Industry
(0:14:28) - The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act and Legal Barriers
(0:16:42) - Challenges in Detecting Agroterrorism and Bioterrorism Risks
(0:18:25) - Break Segment
(0:19:16) - Cybersecurity and Agroterrorism: Are Cyber Attacks a Form of Agroterrorism?
(0:20:50) - Cyber Activists, Hacking Groups, and the Role of Hacktivists
(0:22:10) - The Growing Threat of Social Engineering in Agriculture
(0:23:36) - Radical Activism and Cult-Like Behavior
(0:25:03) - Steps Farmers Can Take to Protect Against Agroterrorism
(0:26:52) - The Role of Risk Management and Insurance in Agroterrorism Defense
(0:29:20) - Do We Have the Right Knowledge and Skills to Protect Agriculture?
(0:31:07) - How to Build Trust Between the Agriculture and Cybersecurity Communities
(0:32:58) - The Need for Verification and Trust in Food Security Efforts
(0:33:38) - Notable Agroterrorism Incidents and Lessons Learned
(0:38:59) - Cyberbullying, Threats, and Intimidation Tactics in Agroterrorism
(0:42:22) - The Psychological and Mental Health Toll on Farmers
(0:43:04) - Promoting Awareness and Education About Cyber Threats in Agriculture
(0:48:36) - How Insurance Can Mitigate Agroterrorism and Cybersecurity Risks
(0:50:20) - How Cybersecurity Professionals Can Get Involved in Protecting Agriculture
(0:56:24) - Why Cyber Awareness in Agriculture is Critical
(0:57:23) - The Role of Farmers in Cyber and Physical Security
(1:00:15) - Final Thoughts and Takeaways
(1:02:13) - Outro
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00:22 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Welcome back to the Bites and Bytes Podcast, where food technology and cybersecurity collide. I'm your host, Kristin Demoranville, and today we're talking about a topic that's both urgent and very unsettling Agroterrorism. Farms are being targeted by cybercriminals, 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, 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. Andrew, just quickly introduce yourself and then we'll go around the room.
01:38 - Andrew Rose (Guest)
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 best in the world, my opinion.
02:10 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
It's great. Hannah, do you want to introduce yourself?
02:13 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
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 DC area. Great Thanks.
03:21 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Hannah Appreciate that. And, last but not least, Mike.
03:28 - Michael Urbanik (Guest)
Hey guys, my name is Michael Urbanik. I'm an insurance agent with Arcade Tongue over 100-year-old brokerage just out of Baltimore. I live down in the Richmond area, but 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.
03:59 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
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.
04:10 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
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. So it is a very rich and premium chocolate bar with Oreos in it, which I love. I had to bring it into my office and hide it from my husband, because she brought him one too, but of course he started to eat mine first, so I just had to ration it and bring it in and hide it. So that's my current fixation of the moment is my Spanish chocolate bar.
04:50
And then the first thing that popped to my head not to say on this international theme, but when you started talking about a food memory was when I studied abroad in Brazil, and we went to like an actual Brazilian steakhouse and at this point I had never been to. You know the Fogo de Chão and the Americanized version. So it was all new to me and just the parade of meat and different types of meat, from Brahma hump to chicken hearts, to picanha and everything else and it just kept appearing and we just kept eating it. So that's the first like very distinct food memory and especially again, I never been to even the American version of one before that, so it was just meat as far as the eye can see, which at the Animal Agriculture Alliance we love that. So that was my distinct food memory was my first authentic in Brazil Brazilian steakhouse experience. That is awesome.
05:40 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Mike, why don't you go ahead?
05:41 - Michael Urbanik (Guest)
Yeah, I'll say a recent food fixation of mine is my wife. I and some friends went to a hot pot restaurant here in Richmond and that was my first time going and I think we probably sat there for three hours just eating and talking and a lot of different foods and meats and stuff I'd never had before. So that was a really awesome recent experience and definitely want to go back. And then food memory. I was talking to my wife about this, never had before. So that was a really awesome recent experience and definitely want to go back. And then food memory. I was talking to my wife about this. My mom used to have an old school mixer and with the beaters that would spin and she would make cookies around Christmas time and I remember always getting past the beater and licking the cookie dough off of the beater. So we're talking about that and that's like a very fond memory right that sits in my mind of eating cookie dough off those beaters.
06:28 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
And I'm sure every food safety listener just cringed as you said. That I know.
06:33 - Michael Urbanik (Guest)
But it is. I think everyone's had that moment, though I know.
06:36 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
We still do. And Andrew, last but not least, Sure.
06:42 - Andrew Rose (Guest)
Well, you've heard a few of my other fixations and memories as well, so mine are nowhere near as triumphant as Hannah's and Mike's. But apple cider donut something I'm always craving, you know, in terms of that sweet treat. And then I just got back from a couple months in the Northeast and I try to eat everything that maple syrup in it. So not necessarily a fixation, but more of an ingredient, and so I'm thinking about maple syrup scones and how can I incorporate maple syrup and other things I'm doing until I reach that threshold where I can't tolerate it anymore. Then you wait another year, then cycles back around, and then food memory.
07:12
I think back often to when I was at Farm Credit and we would put on these member dinners, so we'd bring in a geographic region, all the members together, and I never missed one that we did up in the Lancaster area when the plane community would come to Yoder's restaurant and if you picture the Harry Potter Cathedral dinner, it was like that. It was just long tables of beautiful families, wonderful conversations and, hannah, the food just keeps coming until you stop eating. I mean, there's always something new coming down the table and it's not necessarily the food, but it was also the conversations, just the love and the beautifulness of sitting there and having those conversations around that meal. So thanks for reminding me of that too. I had thought about that a while, but I really enjoyed it.
07:53 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
I spoke at a meeting in Lancaster recently and I'm not that far away, but I legit went up like a day early so I would get to go to the dinner at the Shady Maple. I was like that's on the agenda, I'll be there the night before, even though I could drive up the morning of. So, yeah, it's definitely worth the trip.
08:09 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
That's amazing, and I love that you had centered around community as well, andrew, because I know that's a big deal for you. So that's awesome. Great. This is all wonderful, but we're here to talk about Agroterrorism and people are probably like what is that Another terrorism? Great, if someone could define it, that'd be amazing.
08:25 - Andrew Rose (Guest)
I'm going to throw Mike under the bus on this one because I know there's well when I research there's different definitions from different agencies Depend if you're talking to the FBI, if you're talking to the insurance companies, and then where does that nuance end? But I always lean upon Mike. He's my encyclopedia Britannica of insurance knowledge.
08:41 - Michael Urbanik (Guest)
Yeah. So you know, if I'm going to define it, I'm going to kind of go to what the government officials are going to define it and I'm sure, as this conversation progresses, we'll go back and we'll talk about events following September 11th and what is terrorism? Because that's going to factor into insurance pretty substantially, but Agroterrorism, andrew you.
09:03 - Andrew Rose (Guest)
No, it's fine. And one of the things I recall was there needs to be a $5 million threshold for damage. There needs to be an intent and an ideology to move a political message when the means, other means, aren't there. And I think that one of the definitions was guerrilla warfare is the tool of the weak and terrorism is the tool of the weakest. My goodness, yes.
09:29 - Michael Urbanik (Guest)
So that'll go back to. You know, what we pulled is kind of going back to that terrorism risk insurance act that was passed following the attacks of September 11th back in 2001,. The act was passed in 2002. Obviously, that space, that ideological space, has been built out substantially because we really had to think critically what is terrorism and define it. And that's a very, very hard thing to do. But if we talk about Agroterrorism and I'm going off the FBI's definition now, so we're pretty far into the chapter here but it's a substance of bioterrorism. It's defined as the deliberate introduction of an animal or plant disease for the purpose of generating fear, causing economic losses or undermining social stability. So that's what the FBI is defining it as. And then you know we can say well, what is terrorism here and what is war? And you're right, andrew, we had a couple, you touched on a couple of keystones there.
10:20
So certified acts of terrorism is defined by the US government and it's one act resulting in insured losses in excess of $5 million in aggregate, attributable to all types of insurance subject by the Terrorist Risk Insurance Act. The act is violent in nature, dangerous to human life, property or infrastructure, and is committed by an individual or individuals as part of an effort to coerce civilian participation of the United States or the influence the policy affect the conduct of the United States government by the coercion. Terrorism excludes or the inapplicability or omission of a terrorism exclusion do not create coverage or injure or damage otherwise excluded under this policy. So that's a lot. It's thick legal language. It's a lot of stuff that the normal lay person doesn't think about.
11:16
But the concept behind this was September 11th was really an unprecedented attack. How do insurance companies deal with a risk like this and how does the US government help them? So they more or less attempted to define what is going to fall into this category, what type of loss. They put a definition to it and then they put a threshold saying okay, if damages exceed this amount, then it's going to fall into this risk bucket and that's where the US government and taxpayer dollars can come in to help indemnify and support. Because, you know, terrorism is different than acts of war. Acts of war are completely excluded under all insurance policies. So we're trying to, I guess, give some black and white to this very gray space, and it's an evolving topic.
11:56 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
And I found that same definition. When Kristin kind of spoiler alert earlier that she was going to be asked to define agroterrorism, I was like, oh, I better like have something at the ready. And I found that same definition that focused on disease introduction, which I thought was interesting and maybe needs to be updated, and probably has been updated in practice Because, from what we see, it's much broader than that and we look to like the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act from an animal perspective, which does not limit it to disease introduction. It's about disrupting the supply chain. So the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act talks about that.
12:30
You're engaging in conduct for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise. So that would be kind of our definition that we work under. When we talk about this concept at the alliance that you know, it's about stopping the food supply chain or preventing the ability of getting food to people, and that's when it becomes this definition of agroterrorism. And then, similarly to you guys mentioned, it says a statute covers acts that damage property or cause the loss of real or personal property or places someone in reasonable fear of injury. So from an animal perspective, we really look to that Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act that came about in 2006 because of incidents related to this.
13:12 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Maybe the original definition, Mike, that you're reading was probably based on like during war times in a way, so poisoning of horses if you're moving military or the livestock that fed on army, or something like that. Maybe that's kind of an old set of definitions and I mean that is terrorism in itself, right, you're poisoning animals to harm people that are dealing with whatever's going on in a crisis situation. Maybe that's why that definition never really updated, because it was still very military focused.
13:39 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
And biosecurity is definitely a big part of it. I mean that's why we have a big concern a lot of times with trespassing on farms and in operations, that there's a reason why you know if you've ever been to a hog farm or a broiler farm, you've got to shower in, shower out, suit up. At the very least you can't wear shoes you've worn on another farm. There's restricted access and that's not about limiting transparency, that's about limiting disease transfer from farm to farm, so that the disease element is definitely still a big part of it. I would just say it's probably not everything that would fall in that bucket.
14:13 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Yeah, that's really interesting.
14:14 - Andrew Rose (Guest)
Well, quick question for you, Hannah, with the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. I know that there have been some fits and starts in having it apply to certain circumstances. It appears again I haven't followed it closely it appears that now it's getting traction. Can you comment on some of the cases that have come up and how it's been applied?
14:28 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
So we've seen it come up and really what tends to be the hold up to it being applied is first of all that documented economic harm Because, for a good thing, the animal agriculture supply chain is very resilient, so it tends to be very adaptable. So even if there's an activist incident that does disrupt the supply chain, does cause operations to be hindered or become problematic, it doesn't rise to the threshold. I would have to look at what the dollar amount. But exactly what you and Mike were talking about, there is a dollar amount of documented damages you have to show, amount of documented damages you have to show. So that tends to be a big problem is being able to document that these activist incidents rose to that threshold in the individual circumstances that we can point to.
15:13
So there's definitely been a lot of interest because we have seen in the last five to 10 years a big uptick in the more extreme on-farm actions and I know that's one thing to think about. You know what is agroterrorism and what isn't. You know there are definitely things that we would consider to be activism that do not necessarily cross that threshold. So the petitions, the social media, the waving signs and dropping banners off of roads, those are problematic in their own way and we have to think about how that affects consumer perception. But that is very different than this idea of trespassing onto a farm or chaining yourself to a U-Haul outside of a poultry plant and literally saying we want to disrupt the supply chain, we do not want chicken to be getting to the grocery store. That's when it becomes this food access issue for consumers.
15:59
So we're seeing more and more discussion of this as we've seen the activists become more emboldened and you know they're talking about being inspired by groups like the Animal Liberation Front, being inspired by groups like Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty, which are the type of groups and activities things like arson, things like harassing people's family members making those kind of threats, which is why the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act came about. So we're definitely hearing more concern that these incidents, as they escalate, are going to get to that point. But a lot of times it's the economic damages that again, it's a good thing that our food system is resilient and has been able to adapt around these challenges and that they haven't necessarily risen to that level, but that kind of stops cases from moving forward a lot of times.
16:42 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Are there any challenges in detection, because I would assume that some of these incidents would mimic some natural outbreaks, potentially, or making identification difficult at times. It may not be an obvious. This is a terrorist moment. This could be locusts or something Just curious.
16:58 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
There can definitely be challenges with really pinpointing what was a cause. A very recent example one of the most extreme groups that we follow Direct Action Everywhere. They had an ongoing criminal trial in California stemming from various incidents there, and during the trial they went back to some of the farms that were involved in the trial to say, oh, these problems are still happening, we still need to keep investigating. And then there were avian influenza outbreaks on those specific farms that they had been to. So the California Department of Food and Agriculture put out one of their statements saying that that was.
17:36
You know, it's hard to say definitively, so even the CDFA statement doesn't say we know that this is what caused this, because it's hard to your point to pinpoint, but they said this is a probable. We have reason to believe that this could have been, because it's very odd that these two farms that these same people admitted that they went to within this timeframe then had an outbreak within this timeframe Back when this group really came on the scene. There was also similarly, it was on the heels of, like the 2014, 2015 High Path AI outbreaks, and they had gone into an egg farm that that barn of birds had to be depopulated out of concern for what could have been introduced. Unfortunately, it is hard to necessarily pinpoint and say you know, this is exactly what this is attributable to, which, also, you know, makes it difficult for them to face consequences.
18:25 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
We'll be right back after a quick break, but before we continue, I want to take a moment to thank you for tuning into the Bites and Bytes Podcast. This episode is packed with critical insights on agroterrorism, cybersecurity and real threats facing agriculture. If you would like to learn more about these issues, I've included additional resources in the show notes. And while we're here, don't forget to like this episode If you're listening on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform. Leave a comment and share your thoughts and, most importantly, help spread awareness by sharing this episode with your network. All right, let's jump back in. As you're talking, I'm thinking about supply chain disruptions and I'm thinking about all the different ways that happens. And from my security mindset, ransomware is a disruptor. You know malicious intent, whether it's inside or outside, or threat is disruptive. Does cybersecurity incidents fit into Agroterrorism?
19:16 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
There are definitely some examples we can point to. A lot of times it is more small scale incidents. Andrew, I think it might've been the panel that you were on at our conference where I learned the term. It's not catfishing, it's romance fraud. It's the official law enforcement definition for, you know, misrepresenting who you are to strike up relationships.
19:35
But we have seen that happen where some of these extremists will have fake online personas to strike up relationships with plant and farm workers to get information about operations. We've also seen that they will gain access and then get information off of computers, install spyware to again be able to piece together the supply chain and figure out when certain things will be happening on the farm that they want to quote, unquote document or figure out what major customer restaurant retail this farm supplies to. So we've seen those kind of smaller scale incidents. And then the other thing we've seen that's somewhat alarming is some of the bigger trends of you know. We've seen feed mills be disrupted.
20:13
We've seen I believe it was JBS be disrupted because of these large cyber incidents and we see the activist groups admiring that. So they're saying, oh, we didn't do this, but we'd love it if we had. And you know, because if we can shut them down for a day, you know, because if we can shut them down for a day, you know that's exactly what they want to see happen. So there's definitely some concern. There's a group called the Vegan Hacktivists. They use hacktivists very loosely. They like code websites for people, but there's definitely like leanings and you know, seeing these big trends and how disruptive these ransomware incidents have been, and them saying how can we partner up with those people to do this in the name of our cause?
20:50 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Considering hacking is now a service as a service is terrifying, and the fact that they could just basically find a hacking gang on the dark web and there you go, you start a relationship. We're off to the races with this Literally, that is. Obviously the listeners can't see all my my faces, but I was making like 15 faces during that whole conversation because I get that a lot. It's it's knowing what I know about operational technology and cybersecurity and what I know about the food industry as a whole and agriculture. There are so many attack factors that need to be dealt with now. Like that is insane to me.
21:23
And now we have to deal with the people problem on a different level, just people being really bad people because they, whatever feelings they have, or financial gain or nation state or any of that stuff. That is one more thing the farmer doesn't need or the producer doesn't need. They just want to raise their animals and farm and do their life and that's it. That's all they want to do. And now they have to worry about all of this and all the new tech they bring in is a new issue and potentially going to be used against them or to spy on them. Farm tours, I'm sure you could speak to that, hannah how that's probably very problematic ultimately and that was something I learned from Andrew as well that farm tours are actually problematic and they can be if they're not done right and people aren't watched because, just like a risk assessment, you can go around and take pictures and understand how the systems work and use it against people.
22:10 - Andrew Rose (Guest)
I want to go back to something that Hannah said a little while ago. We often hear about the highly pathogenic avian influenza. Each path highly pathogenic that's a medical term. That means a 70% mortality rate be called highly pathogenic. So this is a dangerous virus that's spread around. And, hannah, I think and I might be mistaken on this that incident in California I think they actually went down to the genotypes and were able to pinpoint that strain did come from that farm and was introduced by them as well. Yeah, there's no denying that happened.
22:37
And on a broader level, I, along with cybersecurity risks we talked about ransomware. The future of these attacks are going to be social engineered attacks. Someone is going to have a synthetic persona and they're going to approach in a certain way to appeal to romance or job or whatever that thing is. And a lot of the folks in the vegan community and I know it is not considered a religion, but if you do follow their doctrines you can see there's tiers that they all try to achieve and, in my mind, is even they don't have an oracle or a priest or something like that there is a lot of religiousiosity about being a vegan. It's a belief in the animals rather than the health or anything else around that. And if it is indeed designated as a religion, then additional terrorism rules will apply to that as well, so I think they dance a really fine line. Again. Just monitoring their conversations, I've seen vegans eviscerate other vegans because they have a horse or because they feed their cats something that has protein in it rather than broccoli and what have you.
23:36 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
Yeah Well, one of the groups that I mentioned earlier that we follow very closely. In order to be like a member of the group, you've got show your bona fides, you've got to have your arrest record and you have to sign a liberation pledge that says I will not sit in a table or room where anyone is eating animal products. You know not just yourself but family members, friends, and you know obviously ideology behind that. But also it's a way to cut them away from their family members and from anyone that does have different beliefs than them, to kind of herd them into this very extreme echo chamber. So it's very interesting, again, the way that this extreme mindset kind of permeates. And back to what Kristin was saying too you know it is frustrating for producers that you know they're out here just trying to provide a product to people who want to eat it and they have a lot of hurdles in between getting there.
24:24
So for us at the Alliance, we're not a checkoff, we're not a trade association, we're not here to market anything. We're about choice. So making sure that choices are available to people, whether that's animal protein or not. We, you know, we love the corn and soy people too. Whatever you want to eat is fine, whatever aligns with your values and your budgets. It's when there's these extreme actors trying to influence what people even have. The option to buy and eat is when, you know, we get concerned and that's what we focus our efforts on. So keeping choices available to people at a variety of price points is what we are here to do, but for these extremists it's about the opposite. It's about taking choices away from people.
25:03 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Sounds like cult-like behavior the way you describe it. That's incredible. What steps can they take to protect themselves from Agroterrorism?
25:10 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
So there's some common sense things and probably, from a risk management perspective, Mike would have things to add to. But a lot of what we talk about is making ourselves a harder target. So we don't want you to be paranoid, but we want you to take common sense measures Because, according to these people, it's so easy for them to get onto farms they actually released in the wake of the conviction of their leader in that trial I mentioned. In California, they released a 149 page investigation manual about how to get access to farms and plants. So what kind of drones to buy, what kind of heat sensing cameras to use to know whether people are inside the building or not, how to track trucks going from facility to facility to piece together the supply chain Just a ton of stuff there. And you know how to, where to cut the plastic in a barn with plastic curtains so that people won't notice that you've been inside. So they're putting it out there. They're telling us what they're doing, so it's up to us to be paying attention and mitigating all of those things.
26:06
So we talk a lot just about basic things. You know motion sensor lighting, our own cameras, no trespassing signage, locks and keypads that we actually lock, Having a process for verifying visitors to farms and plants, being very strict about employees and always checking references and always doing background checks. So just being aware that these things are happening and taking those common sense measures is what we talk about a lot. And then we refer a lot of our members to more specific law enforcement agencies and then security focused firms to really get in the weeds. You know, I know some folks will come out and do security audits and actually walk around and tell them specifically what they need to be doing. But a lot of our recommendations are those kind of high level common sense things that we think everyone needs to be doing. Wow, yeah.
26:52 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Mike, do you wanna make any comments?
26:54 - Michael Urbanik (Guest)
Some good conversation going on here. I think Hannah's perfectly right. You need to have a good level, or a healthy level, of skepticism and treat things with common sense. And it can be challenging with farm or any sort of animal production area or grow area, because it's a large space and it's hard to secure a large space. You know this isn't like a simple shop downtown where you have a door and maybe one or two entry points. You know, 360 degrees around the perimeter People could, you know, jump a fence or climb a tree or get over and it is hard. So you need to secure what you can have a healthy level of skepticism. Those are the things that you're going to want to do to protect yourself and what insurance carriers are going to want you to do so you can become insured and get a good, reasonable price when it comes to property insurance, and you know that's kind of the tangible stuff.
27:47
Then you can talk more about the intangible stuff, which is computers, and any industry that uses a computer is susceptible to digital attacks, cyber activism, hacking, just being a target, and the question, I think, if you're a business owner and you're listening to this and you ask yourself if I lost use of my computers for a week, two weeks. How would that interrupt my operation? And maybe 10 years ago you might say, oh, not that much, I could keep rocking and rolling without those. But I think every business nowadays would be seriously hampered and damaged. And the way technology works is it just becomes more easy and more accessible every year.
28:24
So that's why we've seen a monumental shift in number of cyber attacks across all industries. The number only goes up every year because the barrier to entry to becoming a cyber criminal is very minimal. Almost anyone can just go buy a laptop, a phone and start sending phishing emails, sending spoof voicemails. What have you? They get one critical piece of information. They can do something with it. Or then we talked about as basically crime as a service they can solicit you know someone who knows what to do sell that little password that they had and then they might get 25% of all of the money that comes later. And then we can talk. You know who are these people doing these crimes. But it's sad to talk about because it's a growth of an industry that we all would not like to see grow. But that's the reality and business owners just have to be very mindful. And there are steps and measures you can take to preventing that.
29:20 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Do you think and this is for all of you do you think that, as a professional group of, we'll say, cybersecurity and any other groups that are surrounding the type of work that needs to help protect, do you think that we have the right knowledge sets to do this? Do you think that we have enough experience to do this? Because, as we know, it's a critical infrastructure, right, so the government's paying attention to it, which is good, or governments, I should say, we're a global audience here but do we have the right skill sets? And how do we get people to understand that this isn't just about necessarily protecting data. It's about safeguarding lives and livelihoods and food safety and security, which is a national, global concern. Honestly, just curious what your thoughts are on that.
30:01 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
We probably have the right skill sets, but are they talking to each other is what our challenge is and what we try to bring folks together, because a lot of times farmers or even large companies that deal with this they don't know what they should report, they don't know who to report it to, they don't know what those guardrails are, and then vice versa.
30:21
Sometimes law enforcement doesn't know the bigger picture, like why is this important? What is the here? Or if they don't know about farms, if they don't know how farms are laid out, if they don't know some of the unique challenges about security in a farm setting, it can be hard for them to give advice. So I think the knowledge bases are there, but we can definitely do more to connect them, which is we spend a lot of time doing that. We do a lot of presentations to law enforcement groups of what we're seeing in the activism space and then asking them OK, what can we take back to our members and tell them? You know we will report incidents when we find out about them to try to raise awareness. But I think that's that's what we see is that the knowledge is there on both sides, but are they talking and are the right people talking to the right people? Probably not always.
31:07 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Fair point. Fair point. And do you think that? And as I was listening to all of you talk, I was thinking about how, stereotypically, the agriculture community is very distrusting. They like to work with their own, they stay to their own, and now we have this external threat that's coming in, that's making them be more scrupulous. They have to think more about who's around and who's in their environment, but yet we are trying to break into different places and I shouldn't use the term break-in, but I did and break-in and have trust with these people to have them understand that technology is not as evil and daunting as it has to be. As long as you put safeguards in, you'll understand it, and there's people that are here to support you. How do we play the trust game here with agroterrorism?
31:47 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
Well, we try to play that role a lot and we do a lot Like people in agriculture know us, they trust us, I hope, and they know that we have their back on these issues. So, quite frankly, we're kind of the pass between of like, hey, can you vouch for me? Or you know, law enforcement might say we're looking at examples of this, can you pull your membership? And then we'll reach out to our membership and then kind of report back and vice versa. So I definitely think we encourage you know members to do that.
32:16
So I don't blame them, you know, we tell them if somebody cold calls you or cold emails, you never take that at face value. You've got to vet them. So we encourage that and hopefully we and others in our network can help make those connections of saying, you know, hey, I've met Andrew, I've met Mike, I know what their intentions are, I know what they're trying to do, like would definitely encourage you to talk with them. So it can kind of be that pass between some organizations that will join the alliance just to be able to say like, we're with you, you know, we support them too as kind of their credentials, their creds. So I definitely think that trust factor is big and we're certainly encouraging that mindset of trust. But verify, and if we can help be part of that verification process, we're glad to do it.
32:58 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
I'm assuming at some point there's probably going to be more of a formal verification that you could be like do you have a blue check? Do you have the little red truck that they use in England and those kinds of things? Maybe at some point we'll have something like agro safe. I don't know. I'm just making things up now because it's such a big thing that people need to know on the fly if this is going to be trustworthy or not, and not spoofed and not deep faked or any of the other terms that are out there. I do have a question, because we're talking a lot about this Are there been any other notable agro-terrorist incidents? Let's just dive into that a little bit because I want to dissect a couple of them and how it happened, what happened and how we can prevent it moving forward, and whoever wants to answer that that's fine.
33:38 - Andrew Rose (Guest)
I do want to go back to one thing that Mike said before, just on the. You know, what can a farmer do? I always come at this from right of boom. I come in the conversation after the attack has happened. So, okay, let's put the pieces together and let's figure out how we can mitigate this going forward. So I always advocate for doing a tabletop exercise, do a what if, and Hannah's probably got, I don't know, seven or eight different case studies she can share with you on different types of activist actions that could disrupt your farming operations, whether it's a protest or something is adulterated or something like that. I would strongly encourage, as part of the business continuity planning anyway, to put a few of those on the agenda. So, in addition to the tornado or the fire, what else you're planning for? Think about that. And I want to go back to something a little bit earlier too.
34:22
A lot of people because we kind of hinted at a cult-like mentality of folks in the vegan community they're very susceptible to program your suggestions and a lot of times, when you're that much of a zealot about what it is you believe in, your enemy's enemy is your friend and our adversaries play on that sentiment and they can utilize these communities as a cat's paw, whether that cat's paw is direct action. That cat's paw could be gathering information for a sympathetic friend, a synthetic sympathetic friend perhaps but our adversaries recognize that is an easy way in. And, as we're getting again going back to that, information warfare, if you have an emotional response to information, you're being manipulated, you have this self-awareness to ask yourself why, who benefits? And go from there. And then, lastly, as these folks are susceptible to suggestions as an action happens, the desire of our adversaries, or even these groups, is to have a copycat action occur. So a lot of times these are more they might be part of small groups. They could be lone wolves or solo operators that are out there that get enthusiastic or something, or driven to that type of action too.
35:29
And with the FBI, the FBI and law enforcement, it can't be everywhere, but what they ask is, instead of being a bystander, be an upstander. If you see something, just say something. It could be for someone's benefit as well. You've heard me say many times if you support January 6th and want to hold a sign, that's great. That's your First Amendment, right. If you don't like animals people eating animals hold a sign. That's your right. Just don't take an action, because once you've taken that action now you've introduced risk and consequence. That's a whole different world. We say those words lightly risk and consequence but they are very serious words in law enforcement.
36:02 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Absolutely. So. Going back to my original question, thank you for that, Andrew. Is there a specific scenario that sticks out in your mind that you're like yeah, I'm never forgetting that one, it's the one I will always go to. It is an example of agroterrorism.
36:15 - Andrew Rose (Guest)
Well, there is one, hannah, and correct me on the facts on this one, because I couldn't find the article. There was a mink farm that there was. A virus was introduced there, so no one could ever raise a mink there again, and for me that checks a few of those boxes as we start getting closer to defining what a terrorist act was. Did that actually happen? Do you remember any details about that one?
36:35 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
Yeah, there's ones like that. And then in Oregon, which might be the same one, where you know they let these mink free but then they also destroyed all these breeding records. So you know, years of records are now gone and impossible to replicate, and mink don't exactly thrive in the wild. So it's completely counterintuitive that these animals are not only not going to survive themselves but also harm the ecosystem in that area. And we've seen a resurgence of the mate releases in the last year or two. There's one going on pretty prominently in Pennsylvania right now where an activist was allegedly paid off by an activist group to trespass and release mink from this farm to disrupt the production of fur. So those kind of releases are big ones.
37:23
And then the ones that really stand out for me are some of the ones that we have followed in Northern California, where it has been in conjunction with an activist conference that typically takes place in that area and kind of their big crescendo of the event will be putting folks on a bus and busing them up to farms or plants. So we're talking about hundreds of people and they will have a smaller group that has received training for trespassing and interacting with law enforcement. They will wear certain colored armbands based on what level of like security access they have and what level of training they received. But then in court they'll say we didn't know we were breaking the law. I'm not sure how that works because I don't break the law on a daily basis and I've also never received training about what to do when I get arrested. But that is what these groups you know. They'll spend a day training here's what to say to police, here's how to handle it. If you get arrested, then they'll go put it in practice. So they'll bus, you know, hundreds of people to camp out for hours outside of a farm, a family farm, most of these incidents and then they'll have a smaller group that goes inside, trespass, steals birds and these are what some of those recent trials in California were focused on, some of these incidents. And to your point earlier, you know it's really a doomsday scenario for these farmers, but it's been reality for the handful of folks in that area. And it's just a day long, eight hour. You know we're watching the live stream. We're trying to coordinate with folks on the ground and help them deal with it as it unfolds and it really is a lot of times. Farmers, most of the time live there on their farm, so it feels very personal.
38:59
There was another ongoing issue in Iowa where you know some of it was the trespass and things like that and the break-ins and surreptitious filming and things. But then they were also going to executives' homes, so they were going to the home of the chief operating officer of this company and they had been doing this to others as well. They buried dead piglets in somebody's yard, they claimed to have feces from a manure lagoon that they dumped in somebody's yard and in this one incident, you know, his grandchildren were visiting at this time. So I picked up the phone, I called and said hey, you know this guy's, he's about to pull up to your house and luckily they knew not to answer because they got that call. Those are some of the ones that that stick out to me.
39:41
This was like I don't know circa 2019, it was a very crazy time that we've kind of watched from afar and tried to help people on the ground manage this. And then you know kind of I mentioned the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act too that the first time people were convicted under that was the Shack 7, the Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty. That was a research focused campaign, but similarly they were threatening people's families. They were firebombing allegedly vandalism, all of that and those names are still names that we see around. They still pop up at activist conferences, they still pop up on social media. So the people that were involved in those and then again we have some of the modern activist groups that say that they're inspired by those type of groups, which is very concerning. So we've really seen kind of a whole gamut of things. You know some that are more of those reputational concerns, but then you know the ones that definitely cross that line to a food chain and food system disruption.
40:38 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Absolutely. I mean, I'm sitting here and I because I've been in cybersecurity and operational technology for a long time most things don't surprise me anymore. Most of the stuff you just said surprised me, like I am shocked and I know how bad humans can be, but like wow, like that's a whole other level of.
40:55 - Andrew Rose (Guest)
Oh, there's another level too. So, in addition to those people at the farm, one of those armbands might be the cyber bullying team that's going after the kids that have an animal at the farm. I mean that, for me, breaks my heart because they're already. If you're a kid, anyway, there's going to be some level of cyber bullying that happens If you're a kid in the agricultural community. It is a dog pile. I mean my heart breaks for a lot of this stuff, and sometimes that's done in conjunction with the physical at the gate. And now you got the online intimidation as well. I view those as hand and glove and not separate incidents.
41:25 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
And I don't know who this was. It was an unlisted number, but I got a voicemail once saying that and it wasn't a threat, but I don't know a premonition. It said something bad is going to happen to you and you deserve it. So even personally, just doing what we do.
41:44 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
we are on the receiving end of emails and phone calls and things Wow. First of all, I feel like there should be like a therapy hotline running on the bottom of our screens right now, because that is a lot to take in. And in my small little world of what I do, that is this is it's almost like you need to have a security operations center just for this, just to watch people.
42:01 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
Yeah, and that's part of what we're up to, obviously, as a nonprofit. We so, yeah, and that's part of part of what we're up to, obviously as a nonprofit. We aren't that powerful, although if you read, you know the activist stories they make us. We're the private FBI quote unquote of the big ag industry. It's like, wow, I sound very important, but you know we're just crowdsourcing information. We're just following things closely on social media that are out there.
42:22
But there is, there is definitely a mental health dimension of this and mental health and agriculture. You know Andrew's worked with Farm Bureau a lot. Farm Bureau has a great campaign at Farm State of Mind looking at mental health issues in agriculture and there's definitely an element of this that comes into play where it is very draining and when you're doing such a demanding job for a public that can be very skeptical of you. But then there's these extreme actors making it worse and really playing off of animal welfare and things. There's definitely a mental health aspect of this that it can weigh very heavily on producers, especially those that are personally targeted.
43:04 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
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43:47
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44:37 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
There is no. I think Mike maybe alluded to this earlier like what is the profile of an activist or an extremist? And really there is no. Like demographic profile, there's no. Oh, they're typically this age and they have this socioeconomic background and this education like. It's a very broad gamut and we definitely see that there's also different levels.
44:57
You know, you've got the true believers that really believe in this and believe that animals should be treated equal to humans, and then you have others that maybe seem to, at least on the surface, potentially have other motivations, whether it's the fame or the fundraising aspect of it.
45:14
So sometimes it is like a genuine disconnect or lack of knowledge. But then for some of these people they just don't believe we should be doing it. So it doesn't matter how well those animals are raised, it doesn't matter what we're doing in terms of animal welfare and sustainability. If, at the end of the day, we are using those animals for food, they just don't believe that that should be done, no matter how well what standards are in place. So for those extremists, I mean they will certainly intentionally or unintentionally misrepresent practices, they will exaggerate things, but at the end of the day, for them it's not. And we tell our members this like don't waste your time trying to engage with those people or educate those people, because it doesn't matter how well we're doing it. So there's definitely a lot of different factors at play that bring somebody into this extreme mindset.
45:58 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
And Mike, how do you ensure this? How do you even go about figuring this out? I mean, how do you manage risk on this?
46:05 - Michael Urbanik (Guest)
Yeah, luckily there are solutions right, and I'll say first, for a lot of things to for anything destructive act, an attack, damage, to fall into this terrorism category and what we call like definitional terrorism by the courts it's pretty rare. And for any claim to get denied by this it's pretty rare. I'm going to stand up for my insurance carriers for a moment. I know a lot of people have a high view of them. But insurance carriers, they do want to pay claims. They don't want to get someone on a technicality and say like, oh no, this is technically this, we're not going to pay it. Carriers don't want to have a bad name in the industry, so they want to pay claims. So let's just talk about a couple things. We recap a couple of things. So one might be like a physical damage attack on your property. They break into your property, they damage your cages, your property. That's going to fall under your general liability, business owner's property policy and what you can do on that policy, as we talk about Agroterrorism, is you can opt in for anywhere from like zero to $200 a year for terrorism coverage. So that's a very simple thing was set up by this terrorism act. If this is a concern to you, call your insurance agent and say, hey, look, do I have this optional endorsement that gives me back coverage for acts of terrorism and that's going to fall into the property category. And they can say, no, you don't have it. And then you can say, okay, well, what's it going to cost to add it? And it's going to be a pretty nominal fee because of just how this act works. They want to make this very easy to afford and very easy to say yes to getting. And again, these type of definitional terrorism attacks are pretty rare. So that's the first thing I would say Just call your insurance agent, review your insurance policy, make sure it's adequate for your risks and ask about this terrorism coverage. The second component is, when we talk about these digital attacks, get a standalone cyber liability policy. That's going to give you business interruption coverage, because that's a big thing that can come of all this that people don't think, yes, they put malware on my computer. I have to throw away all my computers. I have to get new computers, reinstall them. There's a dollar cost there, but all that time you might have lost income as part of it. A standalone cyber liability policy. It's going to give you protection for your assets protection for your financial assets via cyber attack and then also protection for loss of income.
48:36
In preparation for this call, I took a couple calls with some cyber insurance carriers. And when these foreign actors attack because these attacks can come from Russian black hat cyber attack gangs, north Koreans, there's other places that they come from that originated overseas People might think, oh, are these acts of terror or are these acts of war? Because it's coming from a foreign source. Those claims are being paid right now. They are not because those attacks are happening. And carriers are paying those claims and damages. They're not trying to throw them out because of where they come from. Now we could just always be one political step away from now, that country being on a different list and now that attack's viewed differently. I can't say with certain how that'll be interpreted. We'll just have to let the carriers and the courts and Congress deal with that.
49:23
But these policies do cover and pay and they protect from foreign sources and again, you can get on that an optional terrorism coverage and I think I looked at a quote for one of my clients and it was $0 to add that. So they're putting that coverage. So those are tools that are available to pretty much every business. They're very accessible at this stage. Don't miss the forest through the trees here. Talk to your agent, spend maybe a few more dollars. I know everyone wants more dollars from you everywhere. I'm not, you know that's not lost on me. I'm sympathetic to all small business owners, but you know these are very prudent ways to protect yourself.
49:59 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
That's great, Mike. I really appreciate all of that and it's good to hear that the insurance companies care in air quotations. No, no, it's good. It's good that you know we're still working through it and it's organic and people are working through that motion and we're still in an evolving situation. So that's good to hear that they're trying to take a proactive stance on it as much as possible. So that should give a little bit of comfort as you're going through these horrible things.
50:20
I suppose I had a thought while you were talking, Mike, and in conjunction with everybody else, I have a lot of cybersecurity professionals who often come to me and they ask what can I do to get involved in food and ag Short of, like you know, working at a food and ag company? What can I do? I live in a rural area, I live in an agricultural area and I always say volunteer your time, volunteer your time. You know, if you want, you know, go talk to your local farmer if you've created some trust there. But, moving forward, what can we do as a cybersecurity division? If you will, and especially the ones that handle more operational technology, what can we do? Because I mean, I'm ready to like suit up and get into a security operations center now and start, you know, kicking some ass, because that's how I feel about this situation, but this is also me. But what can we do to help you? Help fight the bad guys and diminish this Is it? Can we help bring awareness, can we help educate? What can we do?
51:09
Listeners are definitely going to want to know.
51:11 - Michael Urbanik (Guest)
I'll jump in on that real quick, and Andrew and I have talked about this. So right now, when it comes to, I'll say, insurance products and you can view this question through a couple different lenses but when it comes to insurance, these products have been available for a long time, but the awareness component, or understanding from the business owner that this is what they need, has been really lacking. And you know I'll give you some anecdotal evidence. So the number one and two industries that are targeted by cyber attacks are financial and medical industries, just because if they sit down the computers it all goes to heck real quick, to hack real quick. And we knew that years and years ago. But I'll say this year, cyber liability was probably my number two highest purchased insurance policy by business owners.
51:52
It takes a long time for that message to just permeate the industries and I'll tell you the anecdotal story is, everyone now knows another practice owner or business owner that's had a cyber attack and they're like, if that can happen to him, I'm not very different, it can happen to me. So that's the type of stuff Unfortunately, lessons learned the hard way is why people have been adopting this or taking advantage, because up to this point I think a lot of people think it's like, oh, that happens in movies or that happens to big companies. No, the dollars are there on the table. The bad guys know this. They're moving down industry to smaller businesses because they haven't put the tools and resources in place to protect themselves yet.
52:33 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
A low hanging fruit, it's easy.
52:35 - Michael Urbanik (Guest)
Yeah, exactly, and you know, hey, it might be that, not that retirement job that they pull, but it might, you know, get them over and pay $10,000. That sucks to lose. But if they're putting that into their pocket in, let's say, north Korea or another country that gets them a lot of money, that those dollars go much further. So there's a lot to unpack there. But that to me, anecdotally, it's happening, it's real. Take my word for it. We file claims every year for businesses that say, hey, this happened, and I get to say, yes, this is what we do next. Do you have a policy or no? We talked about this and you opted not to do anything. You got to figure this out on my own, and I'd much rather have that first conversation than the second one.
53:17 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
I always tell people to make it hard. Make it hard for these people to get into your building. Make it hard for them to get into your systems. Don't make it easy, because if it's easy, then in some ways you've probably felt like you deserve it at that point. Right, make it hard. I know it's not going to be easy necessarily to make it hard, but once you've made it hard, you just have to do slight tweaks here and there to change it out or adjust and make it difficult for people to get in. It's always like the people who put alarm systems on their house but leave their front door unlocked. Why, why do you do that? I never understood that. So you don't have to have all the latest and greatest tech, you just have to use it efficiently, right and effectively. That's what's important. Anyways, I'm sorry, I interrupted somebody probably.
53:55 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
Well, we would love to have folks connect with us. You know we kind of sit at this unique intersection of animal agriculture and security and activism activist monitoring. So we have a public newsletter, we're out on social media. A lot of our resources are publicly available. We've got an activist web of who these people are. We have a radical vegan activism report we put out every year. That's public and then even more so for members. Every Monday we send out a recap of activism and what's going on and what's coming up next.
54:24
We actually have a conference every year where we have at least half day of programming that's dedicated to activism security. We always have law enforcement speakers. So we definitely welcome those connections because we need to know who those people are that are interested in this so that we can get you in front of our members and then we can refer members. So Christian's raising her hand for the audio only audience. So, yeah, we'd love to be that connection point and again, we do a lot of speaking. So if we can get in front of audiences to explain to them why this is important and why we need to partner more across law enforcement and agriculture, we're all ears. But definitely welcome folks to get engaged with the Alliance on social media and our newsletters, and maybe even membership if it's of interest.
55:06 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
That's great, Andrew. Do you have any thoughts on that?
55:09 - Andrew Rose (Guest)
I do, and thank you for bringing up the summit. It is one of the best conferences I've ever been to. I do feel and Hennie might want to cover your ears that they price it too low for the value of the conference, because a lot of times you go to conferences just for the networking and then the capsules are throwaway conversations. This one, it's just riveting. Everything about it is done really well and it's a good group of people and there's a camaraderie as well. When you're in there Everyone feels it's just a very friendly place to be. So I'm glad you I was going to give you a shout out for that one if you hadn't brought that one up.
55:38
Going back to the education piece, another group that needs to be educated in my mind are these animal activists. We said that an action can result in risk and consequence and puts you on the radar screen of law enforcement. I think sometimes these activists don't realize what is also on these farms. It's not just the animals they're rescuing. There are large amounts of chemicals that can be used in nefarious ways and that could enter into a conversation with law enforcement as well If you're in a place like that that damages one of those storages or mixes something or some, or even even the thought of something like that occurring. So I do want, from an education point of view, for these animal actors to really think hard before you take any action that's going to put you in jeopardy or put our citizens in jeopardy, because law enforcement will be paying attention to that.
56:24
And then, Kristin, you asked the question about what can the cyber community do for agriculture. Number one is awareness. Just know we exist, Know how important food is to our country and how critical this is. I know electricity, internet, transportation, all these other sectors get a whole lot of attention, but I would really like for them just to pay attention to agriculture and lend resource wherever possible. I think every sector is understaffed, under-resourced.
56:45
But play the hard strings and for your cyber friends, no acronyms, just straightforward talk. I think I've run into so many cyber people and they immediately go right down to those rabbit holes of acronyms. I'm like, all right, listen, I know ag, I kind of know cybers, but you've lost me at this point in time. Just have an authentic conversation. Meet the farmers where they are, go understand what their business looks like, because it might be atypical from another type of business. That's construction or auto repair or something like that, and understand it and just again, kind of going back to the overall theme here, appreciate the role of farmers in our life and our society and in civilization.
57:23 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Yep, and thank them. We've talked about this before, andrew. You have to thank a farmer because they do so much and we don't even know because we're so far removed from it. You know, we just go to the grocery store and oh, there we are Magic, I can just go and get a chicken Great. But I don't have to think about it, how it happened, how it was raised, where it came from and all the love that went into that and the hard work that went into it through multiple families and generations.
57:45
Besides the fact that you know I do cybersecurity within the food industry and agriculture, I also want to support and be there for the people who are doing this work, because I think that's super important. It's part of the reason why I have the platform that I have is because we don't talk about this enough. And I bring this to the cybersecurity conferences and they look at me like I'm crazy because why are we talking about this? But then when they start to hear it, they go we're part of this, we need to do something, and then it's those conversations start up, and then the hallway conversations start up and then people start looking around and trying to understand and incorporating this into their risk assessments. A lot of people will get into the weeds of should they be doing a physical security assessment? On a risk assessment, yes, you should Like. I think it's part of risk, right Like? That makes sense to me.
58:29
But having a different mindset when you're walking around an agricultural facility, whether it's a greenhouse or a chicken farm, is it kind of different. You need to look at things a little bit differently and have that mindset of almost being a bad actor. You know, we kind of look at things in a skewed way. Well, now we usually look at it in a different way. I mean, Hannah, you've made me realize that I need to start thinking more nefariously horrible, because people are awful like yikes and in so many ways, and it's resonated heavily with me. So, thank you everyone for being here. Any final thoughts as we're about to close out. I know there's a lot more I could say and I really wanna keep everybody on for their hour, but I think we need to keep going need to keep going.
59:08 - Hannah Thompson-Weeman (Guest)
We do try to end on a positive because obviously our presentations aren't the most uplifting thing and people look at me the way that you've looked at me throughout this discussion. But the good news is for the animal agriculture community that the vast majority of people happily consume meat, poultry, dairy eggs and seafood and it's our job to make sure they continue feeling confident doing so. So there are things we can do with being transparent, answering questions and open up the barn door for that 95% of the population. And, yes, we have to be mindful of security. We have to follow all the things we've talked about here because there are those extreme perspectives, but we always try to level set and say you know, people are consuming meat. Try to level set and say you know, people are consuming meat.
59:47
The things that impact their decisions are typically more price and economically driven than they are driven by the concerns that these type of groups are trying to raise. So there's good news, there's positive things, there's a lot of opportunities in this space and we have the back of the industry. The industry is working together. We've seen so many deepening relationships between animal ag and law enforcement over the past few years, so I think it's a positive direction that we're going in. They're going to get more extreme, but we're also going to get more prepared.
01:00:15 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
Good. Thank you for the positivity. I really appreciate it, Mike. Any closing thoughts?
01:00:18 - Michael Urbanik (Guest)
Yeah, I'll give two. One is you know the things we talked about can be addressed. You know you have to own the risk as a business owner. You have to manage it and control it. You can't just pass the buck, but it is achievable. There are carriers, there are tools available to you to help ensure this and protect yourself at a reasonable cost. And then I'll go back to my second point. Number one prevalent type of attack in the digital space right now it's gone back up Phishing attacks. It is the human element that they are targeting Getting you to respond to a fake email, getting your employee to send something. They shouldn't Turn on multi-factor authentication. These things are free, they're easy to do if you have a Google Gmail. But that is the number one. They're still attacking the human. So you got to traverse this digital space with good air of caution about you.
01:01:07 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
The human, so you got to traverse this digital space with good air of caution about you. Okay, and this is why it's always people in process before the technology every damn time, andrew.
01:01:13 - Andrew Rose (Guest)
So my final thoughts are I mean number one I am just so happy to be here with Hannah and Mike and yourself I mean some of the smartest people I've been around and every time we have one of these conversations I learn more and take lots of notes and maybe even borrow a phrase or two that I'll use some other time. I'm going to come back to how we started and that's the definition. I know that if you are subjected to some of the actions of these animal activists, it's going to feel like terrorism. It's going to feel visceral and emotional. Just be careful throwing that word around.
01:01:40
Again, as we discussed, there are certain definitions of terrorism. I think that it gets applied in some instances where it's not quite valid. But also we discuss, I think there's some definitions that need to be re-examined. I won't go back to the religiosity of veganism, but I think that's an important topic that we need to discuss as well. But overall, I'm just thankful to be here having this conversation, because I think it's important to frame this properly. I can't talk enough about Hannah's organization. So if you're not a member, please consider being a member. Follow them, support them. The information they put out is way beyond the price and cost of entry.
01:02:13 - Kristin Demoranville (Host)
That's amazing and I'll make sure everything's in the show notes, so we have all the links, but thank you very much for being here. I really appreciate it. This was so enlightening for me as a host. Like this is fantastic. Like this is the kind of conversations that I live for, so thank you very much for your time for all three of you. That's a wrap on today's episode of Bites of Bites. A huge thank you to Hannah, Mike and Andrew for sharing their expertise and discussing agroterrorism with us today. This is a conversation we all need to be having. We've covered a lot today real world attacks, risks farms face and how cybersecurity plays a critical role in protecting our food supply. If you found this episode valuable, please be sure to like, comment and please do share. Raising awareness about these threats is critical. You can find links to everything we discussed today in the show notes. And remember, the conversation doesn't have to stop here. The more we know, the better we can protect what matters. Stay safe, stay curious and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.
