Sticking It To Russia? Good! Remotely Bricking Ag Equipment? Not so much.

News out of Ukraine about remotely disabled farm equipment is bad for Russia (and that’s good). It is also underscoring how agricultural OEMs like Deere keep farmers under their thumb.

I can say confidently that there is nothing that gives me more joy these days than stories about valiant Ukrainians sticking it to the Russian military in defense of their nation, and in the face of a genocidal campaign to murder their people and wipe their country off the map.

So there was a certain satisfaction in reading the latest news, that thieving Russian troops who made off with millions of dollars in new John Deere agricultural equipment were disappointed to find, once they had stolen the gear, that it was useless - remotely disabled by the manufacturer which, we learned, was also able to track the movement of the stolen equipment via GPS sensors on the machinery.

“The equipment now appears to be languishing at a farm near Grozny. But the contact said that ‘it seems that the hijackers have found consultants in Russia who are trying to bypass the protection,’” CNN reported. Though it is making news now, the theft happened in March and was first reported in early April.

A John Deere dealership in Melitopol, Ukraine, from which agricultural equipment was reported stolen by Russian troops.

LoJactor, anyone?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled that the thieving Russian troops invested time, resources and energy into stealing and transporting what now amounts to a multi-ton green and yellow sculpture.

Their actions appear to be more criminal than strategic - with Ukrainians describing dueling bands of soldiers coming by an Agrotek dealership in Melitopol, which has been occupied by Russian forces since early March, to make off with the gear, valued at nearly $5 million. Looting (along with raping and murder) have been hallmarks of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine. So we can file remotely disabling this gear under the category of “whatever it takes” - just like the amazing stories of Ukrainians flooding their own towns and homes to keep the Russian army at bay.

And remotely disabling a piece of stolen equipment isn’t all that unusual. GM’s OnStar service offers a similar feature for car owners that - like Deere’s Operations Center - uses GPS and remote control features on the vehicle to stop it, once it has been reported stolen. (It’s not quite that simple, of course, as this New York Times article from 2010 points out.)

Given the cost of new Deere equipment - tractors and combines can cost upwards of $500,000 - anti theft features in some form make sense. (Though stealing a combine is no easy feat, without the resources of a rogue military at your disposal.)

But, in all likelihood, anti-theft was not the main purpose of the software and cloud-based services used to disable the stolen gear in Ukraine. Rather, the disable feature is likely a byproduct of other remote management and monitoring features that Deere has installed in late model equipment and which the company uses to monitor the performance of its equipment in realtime, while also harvesting reams of agricultural data from its customers - data that the company can then monetize.

For that reasons, there are lots of issues to unpack with this story...