Central Intelligence VI

In 2026, across Europe, supermarket refrigerators have become instruments of sabotage. In at least eleven countries — from Belgium to Sweden, Germany and Portugal — hackers raised the temperatures of refrigeration systems to as high as 50 °C, forcing retailers to discard tonnes of food and causing losses running into the millions. The first attack of this kind occurred only in France in October, it has now spread to more countries. In France, the same type of attack reached blood banks. Storage units belonging to the Établissement Français du Sang saw their temperatures reprogrammed from -30 °C to 110 °C, although rapid detection prevented any operational damage. Democratic institutions, administrative networks and airport check-in providers have not been spared. The pattern is one of increasingly prosaic targets, with chaos measured by how easily food and plasma — crucial elements in the event of a catastrophe — can be spoiled. In parallel, this week saw a wave of false bomb threats directed at 271 Italian schools and at least seven European flights — resulting in diversions, fighter-jet escorts and temporary airport closures — as well as at a cruise ship operated by an Israeli company, the Crown Iris, which was evacuated in Greece while en route to Haifa. None of the threats was confirmed. At almost the same time, the largest cryptocurrency theft in history drained roughly 6.3 billion dollars from Binance in about half an hour. The FBI and blockchain analysts attribute the operation to the North Korean group TraderTraitor, whose proceeds have for years funded the regime’s weapons programme. The digital realm, so often presented as libertarian, is revealed here as an efficient financing channel for actors who care little about the stability of the West. These episodes — refrigerators, blood banks, bomb threats and cryptocurrency heists — bear the hallmark of trials. They measure response times, the capacity to contain damage, and the degree of disorganisation that can be generated with relatively modest resources. They do not occur in isolation. They have intensified while, in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and other countries, protests over the cost of living and education increasingly turn into clashes, looting and attacks on security forces, with radical groups exploiting the situation. The overlapping calendar allows one to gauge, with almost experimental precision, how quickly everyday order fractures when digital pressure and street pressure coincide. The majority of citizens, owing to the media, continue to treat each incident as an isolated accident or as a footnote. The escalation suggests the opposite: a calibration phase in which what European society can withstand is being tested before the chaos ceases to be experimental. Paying attention and preparing oneself — strengthening the resilience of critical infrastructure, reducing the exposure of industrial systems, and not normalising violence in the streets — is, at this moment, the bare minimum of realism.