The War You Never See

By Don Jackson | Prodigal Breaking News | prodigalbreakingnews.com

Prodigal — The Podcast, Episode 43, with Don Jackson and Daysha Voss. 🎧 Listen to the full episode on Substack

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When's the last time you thought about your refrigerator?

Not what's in it. The machine itself. The hum. Most of us think about it exactly once: the day it breaks. The same goes for the water from the tap, the lights, the gas pump. We never see the systems that keep us alive until they stop.

This week we learned that somebody may have noticed that before we did.

1. The freezers

In August, freezers at U.S. military commissaries, the grocery stores on bases where service members and their families shop, started failing. At Fort Huachuca, Arizona, one freezer's temperature was raised overnight. A base post on August 26 said it "went into defrost mode where it heated up all the food."

Reviewing bases' own Facebook posts and website updates, Reuters counted at least six commissaries with problems. On Thursday, four officials told Reuters the Pentagon is now treating the failures as a suspected cyberattack. A Cyber Command unit is involved, along with the Army Criminal Investigation Division's Cyber Field Office. The Pentagon says it is "working in close coordination with interagency and law enforcement partners."

Here's what isn't known: who did it, whether it connects to anything else, and how far the investigation has gotten. It's a suspected attack. We'll keep saying "suspected" until someone with evidence says otherwise.

But notice what was targeted. Not a bank. Not anyone's email. Food.

2. France, two weeks ago

On October 12, hundreds of supermarkets across France were hit at once. Hackers remotely forced refrigerators and freezers into defrost. The Associated Press counted at least 300 Intermarché or Netto stores, more than 100 Coopérative U stores, and 80 Carrefour supermarkets. Paris prosecutors said the attack started fires and opened an investigation. Stores threw out their fresh and frozen food.

Coopérative U's chief executive, Dominique Schelcher, called it "unprecedented" and said targeting this equipment "is of extreme gravity." The EU's agriculture commissioner, Christophe Hansen, said: "Food security requires more attention at all levels."

Many of the hijacked units ran on controllers made by the Danish company Danfoss. Danfoss said most of the affected equipment was legacy hardware that no longer gets security updates, some of it running outdated firmware, and that it had long advised supermarkets to upgrade.

U.S. military investigators have been in touch with their French counterparts, Reuters reports. Nobody has said the two cases are connected.

3. The water

The last week of July, water systems in at least seven states were hit, according to TIME. Hackers got into internet-connected controls, changed administrator passwords, and caused problems like flooding and pressure loss. Minnesota said at least 30 municipal water facilities were targeted on July 26 and 27. Michigan reported nine of its systems.

State officials say the attacks mainly interrupted service and did not contaminate drinking water. Some plants switched to manual operation, and Michigan said all its systems kept running safely. The FBI and EPA still warned that this kind of access "could potentially allow untreated ground water to seep into pipes."

Investigators have not publicly said who did it. The attacks came days after a federal update on Iranian cyber threats, and in 2023 the federal cyber agency attributed an attack on a Pennsylvania water facility to CyberAv3ngers, a group linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard. President Trump dismissed the idea of Iranian involvement and blamed Minnesota. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz suggested Iran was retaliating for U.S. strikes and criticized federal cuts to the cyber agency. There is no official answer yet.

What isn't in dispute: the EPA has warned for years that many local water systems run outdated software with weak access controls and little cybersecurity training.

4. We've seen this before

• May 2021, Colonial Pipeline. A ransomware gang got into the company's business network, and the company shut down the pipeline that carries a large share of the East Coast's fuel. Panic buying followed. The company paid the hackers millions.
• June 2021, JBS. One of the world's largest meat processors was hit by ransomware. Plants shut down. It paid too.
• February 2024, Volt Typhoon. The FBI, NSA and the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned that a group they tied to the Chinese government was pre-positioning inside U.S. critical infrastructure (communications, energy, transportation, water), in some cases for five years, to be able to disrupt it in a future conflict.

Wars used to be fought at borders. Some are now fought at the faucet, the freezer and the fuel pump.

5. The honest part

Most freezers that break aren't hacked. Most water main breaks aren't foreign agents. Most outages are storms, age, and the occasional squirrel. Turning every failure into a conspiracy is its own kind of manipulation, and fear is a product people sell.

The real answer is boring. The federal cyber agency's advice to water utilities wasn't cinematic: validate external connections, add layers of password security, and disconnect key systems from the internet. France was hit, at least in part, because old equipment kept running after the warnings.

The danger isn't only a genius in a basement. It's neglect. And neglect is a decision someone with a title makes: to delay the update, to skip the budget line, to leave the controller on the open internet.

6. Who's watching the machines?

Here's the part we keep returning to on this show. The control you can't see is the control that works best.

Almost everything that keeps you alive is run by people you've never met. Most of us couldn't name who runs our water or our power. We pay the bill and trust that somebody, somewhere, is handling it. It's the same reflex that kept so many of us in pews we never questioned: we couldn't see the system, so we never asked who was guarding it.

7. Back to Source

The deepest connection we have doesn't run through any wire. Before the grid and the pipes, there was Source: the one consciousness every one of us is a wave of. That connection doesn't need a password and doesn't go down in a storm. The systems can fail. You are not the system. And your neighbors are not strangers you'll have to fight for water. They're the same ocean.

So, three things. No bunker required.

1. Find out who runs your water and your power. Write the names down. That's not paranoia. It's citizenship.
2. Keep a little water at home. FEMA's guidance at Ready.gov is one gallon of water per person per day, for several days.
3. Know your neighbors. Their names. Who's elderly, who has a baby, who has a generator. When the system goes down, the only system left is us.

And five days from now, look at your whole ballot. The people who decide whether your water plant gets updated are often local officials: city council, county board, utility board.

Notice the pattern. Interrupt it.

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Go deeper: Process this episode with the Prodigal AI companion guide at prodigalai.app, and read today's story "The Freezers Failed. The Pentagon Suspects a Hack" at prodigalbreakingnews.com.

This episode is brought to you by FemChoice, Don Jackson's own company, full disclosure. A private, standalone cycle tracker: no app, no phone, no account. Your Cycle. Your Device. Your Privacy. Shop FemChoice on Amazon

📖 Don's book, Prodigal: Leaving Church and Finding God (Iff Books): https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/iff-books/our-books/prodigal-leaving-church-finding-god

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Tags: Cybersecurity, Critical Infrastructure, Pentagon, Food Security, Water, Preparedness, Prodigal — The Podcast

Hashtags: #NoticeThePattern #ProdigalThePodcast #Cybersecurity #CriticalInfrastructure #FoodSecurity #WeAreSource #ProdigalBreakingNews

Sources:

• Reuters exclusive, "Pentagon treating military base freezer malfunctions as suspected cyberattack, officials say" (Oct. 29, 2026), via ThePrint and U.S. News & World Report
• CBS News (AP): French supermarket refrigeration cyberattack (Oct. 12–13, 2026)
• Al Jazeera: "Hundreds of supermarkets in France hit by 'unprecedented' cyberattack" (Oct. 13, 2026)
• TIME: "What to Know About the U.S. Water Systems Cyberattacks" (Aug. 2, 2026, updated Aug. 6)
• CISA: 2023 attribution of the Pennsylvania water facility attack to CyberAv3ngers (as reported by TIME)
• CISA, FBI and NSA joint advisory on Volt Typhoon (Feb. 2024)
• Colonial Pipeline (May 2021) and JBS (June 2021) ransomware attacks, as widely reported
• FEMA / Ready.gov: water storage guidance