> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thedigitalspeaker.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Synthetic Minds | The Next Cyberattack Wants Your Confidence, Not Your Data - URL: https://www.thedigitalspeaker.com/synthetic-minds-cyberattack-wants-confidence-not-data/ - Published: 2026-11-09T23:48:11.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-09T23:48:11.000Z - Description: The most dangerous hackers are not after your data or your money. They are after confidence. Supermarket freezers warmed across Europe, plasma freezers at France's blood service reset to 110C, AI accounts billed $100,000 in a day. Why chaos is the product, and why any small business can be a target. - Author: Dr Mark van Rijmenam, CSP - Tags: Synthetic Minds Newsletter, #newsletter *Synthetic Minds offers one argument per week about where technology is taking us and what it means for the people and organizations living through it. If you are interested in my daily thinking, subscribe to my* [*Substack*](https://syntheticmindsweekly.substack.com/notes) *and* [*LinkedIn*](https://www.linkedin.com/in/markvanrijmenam/)*.* *Last year I was recognized* [*as the world's #3 futurist*](https://lnkd.in/p/gQMUZQES)*. Voting for the 2027 edition is now open, and I would appreciate your vote. Takes ten seconds, and* [*can be done here*](https://globalgurus.org/best-futurist-speakers-and-thought-leaders-2026/#mark-van-rijmenam)*. On my card, slide *How inspirational?* to 5, click vote and confirm in your email. Thanks!* --- ## [No Ransom, No Stolen Data. Just Chaos](http://thedigitalspeaker.com/synthetic-minds-cyberattack-wants-confidence-not-data/) The most dangerous hackers in Europe are not after your data or your money. They are after your confidence, and they likely work for states whose only objective is chaos. That chaos is cheap to create. The Dutch supermarket's shelves of Albert Heijn ran empty after [a cyberattack](https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/10/albert-heijn-begins-restocking-as-hack-traced-to-foreign-servers/) stopped its Dutch distribution centres, which Ahold Delhaize expects to cost [up to €250 million](https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/11/cyberattack-to-cost-ahold-delhaize-up-to-e250m-in-lost-sales/) in lost sales. In a separate attack that same weekend, someone warmed the freezers of about 700 French supermarkets, came back [across Belgium, Ireland and Sweden](https://www.theregister.com/cyber-crime/2026/11/02/frozen-part-ii-hackers-remotely-defrost-produce-in-euro-supermarkets-again/5306924), then reached France's blood service, where plasma freezers were [reset to heat up to 110C](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cyberattack-france-blood-bank/) through a refrigeration supplier, although no blood was lost as the monitoring caught it on time. What ties these attacks together is what is missing. No ransom was demanded for the freezers, and the pro-Russian groups that [claimed the supermarket attacks](https://cybernews.com/security/russian-hackers-hacked-european-refrigeration-systems/) offered proof nobody has verified. When attackers hit one part of society after another, people start to feel a shadow operating among them that can create havoc. It might not kill anyone, yet, but it creates sufficient chaos. ### The lone hacker has an army too The companies hit look as if they never had their security in order, and many did not, yet a state brings capabilities few companies could resist. However, that shadow does not always belong to a state. Thanks to AI, a lone hacker no longer needs a state: [Acronis found](https://www.acronis.com/en/tru/posts/bossai-inside-the-ai-attack-mesh-that-targeted-taiwans-emergency-services/) one individual in Taiwan running 12 AI agents against hundreds of organizations in 11 countries. ### A butcher can lose everything overnight If one person can reach that far, any business owner can become a target, often without knowing they own a connected machine. Picture a butcher whose freezer links to its manufacturer: attackers break into the manufacturer, set the freezer to heat, and the stock is gone by morning. The same logic runs through AI accounts, where Google found thieves [switching on AI services](https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/llmjacking-monetizing-compromised-cloud-models) companies had never enabled, called [LLMJacking](https://substack.com/@vanrijmenam/note/c-379046805), and billing $100,000 in a day, which is why I hold the vendor responsible for raising the alarm. Either way, attackers might not ask for money, but it will certainly cost a lot of money. Only 10% to 20% of small and mid-sized firms carry [cyber insurance](https://www.swissre.com/risk-knowledge/advancing-societal-benefits-digitalisation/building-a-sustainable-cyber-market-in-the-AI-era.html), and a few years ago a medical debt collector, AMCA, [filed for bankruptcy](https://cyberscoop.com/amca-bankruptcy-data-breach-quest-diagnostics-labcorp/) after a breach drove away its four largest clients. What would your company be worth the morning after its stock, its systems or its customers' trust disappeared? ### Trust is the real target That last loss may be the one attackers want most. Trust will start to break down, and a society that stops trusting its machines becomes more vulnerable. If fridges, cameras and controllers start to misbehave at scale, the internet of things will take serious reputational damage, and small firms will demand action from governments, insurers and manufacturers. The silver lining is that device makers may finally take security seriously, and US agencies have told every organization that depends on refrigeration it "[should assume it could be a target](https://bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/fbi-cisa-warn-of-cyberattacks-targeting-refrigeration-systems)." How many connected machines does your business own that nobody has counted? ### One more thing: the splinternet is powering up Apple will put Alibaba's Qwen [inside Siri in mainland China](https://thenextweb.com/news/apple-intelligence-china-ios-27-3-alibaba-qwen), after China's internet regulator cleared it, while building on Google's Gemini elsewhere. I see this as one step closer to a splinter internet, where different regions see a different internet, powered by different AI that hold different biases. Even democracies have grown careful with foreign AI tools, because those tools can be switched off. ### What is your business, once security decides whether it survives? The core of a business is rapidly becoming data and security, and without them it is end of story. [Black October](https://fortune.com/2026/10/29/black-october-ai-cyberattacks-hackers-php2shell/) showed what is most likely to come, so be ready for a chaotic 2027. --- *If your leadership team meets before the year is out, the* [*Intelligence Age Leadership Program*](https://www.thedigitalspeaker.com/) *gives them one question to answer together:* which of the machines the business depends on could be turned against it overnight. --- If this newsletter was forwarded to you, [you can sign up here](https://www.thedigitalspeaker.com/newsletter-archive/). Thank you. Mark