AI Is Destroying Grocery Supply Chains

"Whole Foods shelves sit empty after a data breach shut down its wholesale distributor. Meat packers working for JBS Foods are paralyzed as an $11 million ransomware attack takes out their processing facilities. Some 2.2 million workers at Stop & Shop and Hannaford have their personal data exposed as the result of a cyberattack on parent company Ahold Delhaize USA. These scenarios, straight from a William Gibson novel, are becoming increasingly common in supply chains across the world."

"In a bygone age, food went from farm and orchard straight to the general store - the only middleman being a clerk whose storefront served as an easy rallying point for consumers. Today, the supply chain is like a spider web of contractors and wholesalers, where every shipment is insured based on risk algorithms and tracked by transportation management systems."

"Just as AI's being pushed into every other facet of our lives, it's coming for each point in the supply chain too, turning an already vulnerable system into an automated security nightmare. Alzuhair notes that the number of businesses choosing AI automation over human-level supply management has gone through the roof in recent years. As one study found, AI is now deeply embedded in all six stages of the UK's food system: supply, production, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste."

High-profile cyberattacks are disrupting grocery and meat supply chains, causing store shelves to empty, processing facilities to halt, and millions of workers' data to be exposed. The modern food supply chain involves many contractors and automated systems that rely on risk algorithms and transportation management tracking. AI technologies are being adopted across supply, production, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste, with farms using precision agriculture to monitor individual plants and animals and manage logistics. Increased AI automation replaces human oversight, amplifying security vulnerabilities and allowing ransomware and data breaches to cascade through interconnected suppliers and distributors.

Read at Futurism