It’s seemed that way for quite some time. Years ago, I remember going to a supermarket when its computers were down. Things pretty much came to a standstill. Among other things, the cashiers didn’t know how to do basic math.

Now we have this:

Hackers targeted hundreds of French supermarkets in a cyberattack that reportedly caused refrigerators and freezers to overheat, spoiling food and sparking fires.

Fridges at French supermarket chains Carrefour, Monoprix, the Les Mousquetaires-owned Intermarché, and Coopérative U, among others, all saw fridges heat up to as much as 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight, Reuters reported Monday.

Coopérative U’s CEO, Dominique Schelcher, confirmed that cyberattacks had affected “refrigeration production facilities of several stores.”

“Attacking equipment that is essential to the preservation of fresh products and the food supply of the French people is extremely serious and unprecedented. It is unacceptable,” Schelcher said in a LinkedIn post.

I love that word “unacceptable.” Just what are you going to do about it, Schelcher?

What is the motivation of a hacker? For some, it could just be the fun of “watching the world burn”:

For others, it’s a political statement much like Luigi Mangione’s deciding to kill the United Healthcare CEO. I think the common denominator is the attraction of having power at a distance, and I don’t just mean electricity. I mean power over a large swath of things, just because you figured out how to hack into a system and control it. Prior to computers, I don’t think there was any way to do this on a large scale.