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Foreign intelligence services have specific data collection priorities for American agriculture. This isn't random—it's strategic targeting designed to understand and potentially disrupt US food production.
"Once seen as just an economic domain, agriculture now sits at the intersection of multiple threat vectors: cyber, bio, economic, and geopolitical."
— ASU Agriculture and National Security Analysis
Adversary intelligence collection focuses on operational, proprietary, infrastructure, and system data—each serving different strategic objectives.
Why it matters: Aggregated operational data from millions of farms reveals total US food production capacity and vulnerabilities.
Why it matters: Stealing seed genetics bypasses 5-8 years and $30-40 million in R&D per variety. China has already done this.
Why it matters: Location data enables targeting for disruption and identifies critical nodes in the food supply chain.
Why it matters: This data enables Volt Typhoon-style pre-positioning for disruptive cyberattacks on US agriculture.
Farm data enables sophisticated geospatial intelligence collection—the same techniques used to analyze military targets are now applied to agriculture.
"Near-daily satellite data enables establishing a baseline understanding of normal patterns of life and detecting subtle changes that may signal potential threats."
— National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Intelligence agencies use "pattern of life" analysis to understand normal operations and detect anomalies. Your farm equipment data enables this analysis at scale.
Economic Espionage Value: Aggregated financial data from US farms gives foreign actors advance knowledge of crop conditions, enabling commodity market manipulation and strategic trade positioning.
Understanding what adversaries target is the first step. Protecting your data requires action.
Review what data your equipment and software collect
Opt out of non-essential data collection features
Understand data terms in equipment contracts