Rep. Rick Crawford to Newsmax: AIM Act Would Fight Cyberattacks on Agriculture

Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., tells Newsmax that after the cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline last month, he told fellow members of Congress that it was only a matter of time before the same thing happened to the food industry. Three weeks later it has.

The cyber attack on the world’s largest meat producer, JBS, now promises to raise beef prices much the same as the Colonial hack caused a spike in gasoline prices.

Crawford, along with other House members earlier this year reintroduced the Agricultural Intelligence Measures (AIM) Act that would establish an Office of Intelligence within the U.S. Department of Agriculture “to leverage the capabilities of the intelligence community to ensure the Secretary of Agriculture is fully informed of all imminent threats and American agriculture is safe from all threats both foreign and domestic,” according to Crawford’s office.

“This should be a clarion call to every member of Congress and every American that that bill needs to pass very quickly,” Crawford said Tuesday on “Spicer & Co.”

Large-scale ransomware attacks are attempts to make money by the hackers, he said, but they have obvious negative, and long-lasting effects on the economy. Gas prices, he noted, have yet to come down even though the Colonial Pipeline is now flowing at full capacity.

“We’re gonna see prices in beef go up, and that’s probably gonna reset a new normal baseline and that’s gonna impact the market basket to consumers,” Crawford said.

National security is another concern, he said, and that’s why he, as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, wants to see more done.

The White House on Tuesday said the JBS attack, like that of Colonial, appears to have come from Russia. Crawford said there is likely evidence to suggest the Kremlin may even tacitly approve of the hackers’ actions.

That’s the reason the United States should not be allowing Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Europe to move along without any sanctions imposed “The Biden administration goes in on day one, shuts down our pipelines, makes us vulnerable, and then goes ahead and lifts the sanctions on Nord Stream to allow them to become a much more productive partner in Europe than we are.”

The attacks will just continue, though, the congressman warned, calling it potentially a “growth industry.”

“Obviously,you have insurance that you can buy in the event that you’re attacked,” he said, adding that now “mediators” have come onto the market to negotiate between the “hacked” and the “hacker.”

“So people are there hanging out shingles trying to get a piece of the action,” he said. “So where’s the incentive to stop?”

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