If you follow the news, you will definitely will have heard of some worrying developments in AI. OpenAI and Anthropic have seen their AI systems start to take action on their own and hack companies’ systems. AI has been able to get into some government systems by developing its own strategy and methods after a group of hackers linked to China instructed it to do so. As far as I know, the government in question has not been disclosed. In this latter case, what is remarkable is that AI followed the original instructions but the way it figured out how to achieve the objectives without any further human input. It acted autonomously.
The risk of malicious use of AI is something that I have been mentioning to my clients for quite some time. Actually, I hinted about it for the first time in a presentation I did in 2014, about the risk of having data falling in the wrong hands. Since then, and even more so with the dazzling progress of AI technology, I have pointed toward the risk of severe cybercrime using AI.
Technology is amazing. That said, I always insist on the fact that technology is only as good as who uses it. By that, I look at two avenues. One is training. We get the most out of technology with training users properly. The other is human nature. The majority of people have good intentions. Their performance with technology depends on their level of skills, which is my point above. Unfortunately, there are evil people out there, too. Be assured that we will use any tool available to pursue their goals, and AI is a tool above all the previous ones. Tool is the key word here, and a tool is just a means to perform a job. Of course, everyone wants the best tool possible. This is where AI fits in really well. It is faster and more powerful than anything we have created before. It opens doors that were difficult to open before, and that is the main problem. Malicious users will get in and protecting digital online systems is going to be challenge number one for all existing systems.
There is a whole range of rogue actors out there. Of course, there are the criminals. Usually, their main goal is about getting money out of their victims. There are the vandals, too. Their main goal is to cause havoc just the sake of it. Of course, damage can be substantial, and even more so with AI. Then, we have the geopolitical actors, with or without the “geo”. AI will bring all the destabilizing actions to a whole new level. AI is going the ideal weapon for future warfare on all sorts of fronts. A few days ago, Donald Trump issued an order allowing US companies to hack overseas groups under certain conditions, allowing them to be the modern version of the privateers who were active from the 16th to the 19th century. Of course, if the US goes that road, other countries will do the same and, let’s face it, it is already happening. Privateers have often been considered as the “good” pirates because they were working for a king, but the difference ends here. Pirates and privateers do the same kind of work, so we can be sure that AI is going to be very popular with pirates.
For all these groups, food and agriculture can be an attractive target. It can be used for extorsion and blackmail as food security and food safety are sensitive areas. It can be used to destabilize countries, to cause social unrest and overthrow governments. It can be used to create dependency of countries to their Ai masters. When it comes to rogue behavior against food and agriculture, AI opens new skies as the limit.
Then, the big question becomes how to safeguard food production and distribution. It is about physical food, but it is about data and the entire production and supply chain that the data support and steers, too. Malicious use of AI can alter all the data and all the systems. All the concerns about geopolitics that have arisen with the ongoing commercial war will be amplified to a whole new level. If you liked rogue tariffs policies, you will love AI mayhem. The problem with evil minds is that they always are one (at least) step ahead of decent people. They are incredibly innovation and technology savvy and oriented. They also understand better than anyone else the importance of performance, as usually their lives depend on it.
So… are we prepared?
Copyright 2026 – Christophe Pelletier – The Food Futurist – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.
