Pull up a lawn chair — and maybe a tinfoil hat — because the latest national-security bedtime story involves tractors, cryptocurrency rigs and a suspiciously well-placed cornfields.
Former national security official David Feith told the investigative newsmagazine 60 Minutes he’s been losing sleep over who owns U.S. farmland — especially land near military bases.
In Feith’s words, “The ability to own large tracts of land, especially close to sensitive U.S. military and government facilities, can pose an enormous problem given the nature of technology today…”
He warned that access to a building, a shipping container or “two” could be exploited for “enormous damage, either in intelligence terms or in military terms.”
Succinct follow-up: “It's an entirely new way of war.”
Let’s be clear up front: this is not a popcorn-ready Hollywood plot where a combine turns into an intercontinental missile launcher.
But in an era where tiny, cheap sensors, powerful math-crunchers and remote-operated devices exist, proximity matters in ways it didn’t before.
The worry is strategic, not cinematic: foreign entities owning land near bases — or powering giant crypto farms next door — creates opportunities for surveillance, supply-chain leverage, or infrastructure strain during a crisis.
Feith points to Ukraine’s drone operations as a modern case study in how nontraditional tools can have sharp consequences.
How big is the “who owns what” issue?
According to USDA data, foreigners own roughly 45 million acres of U.S. agricultural land — about 3.5% of the total — and that figure has climbed sharply.
Chinese nationals account for 277,336 acres, under 1% but politically salient.
There’s no single federal ban on foreign farmland purchases; instead 29 states have their own restrictions or bans.
In 2023, politicians in North Dakota blocked a Chinese company from building a corn mill near Grand Forks AFB, citing national-security concerns.
And in May 2024, President Biden ordered a Chinese-backed firm to sell its property in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and dismantle a cryptocurrency-mining operation near Francis E. Warren Air Force Base — a move that reflects exactly the type of worry Feith flagged.
Why the fuss about crypto mines and cornfields?
Two short answers: power and proximity.
Crypto farms are enormous electricity sinks and data centers in one; a large installation near a sensitive site could pose grid-pressure risks or house computing power useful for espionage-type tasks (think data exfiltration or crypto-crunching).
Owning big, quiet fields near a base provides cover for infrastructure — storage, charging, or simply a line-of-sight for sensors — that wasn’t an issue when the most sophisticated farming tool was a weather balloon.
But before the town crier drums a panic, let’s balance alarm with reality.
Legal, commercial investment in U.S. farmland has been happening for decades.
Not every foreign-owned silo equals a spy ring.
Canadians own the single largest slice of foreign land, by far, and other nations invest for perfectly ordinary reasons: agriculture, supply chains, and long-term food security.
Still, context matters — which is why the Agriculture Department rolled out a seven-point plan this summer emphasizing transparency, stiffer penalties for false reporting, and state–federal coordination to limit “adversarial” purchases.
So what actually helps — without turning every rural county into a surveillance state?
• Make ownership transparent. Feith and many policymakers argue for clearer registries and reporting so suspicious concentrations don’t hide in plain sight.
• Targeted rules, not blanket bans. State restrictions that focus on proximity to sensitive facilities or on opaque shell-company structures are more surgical than broad xenophobic bans.
• Strengthen vetting (and enforcement). The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and similar reviews can screen transactions for genuine risks; resources to pursue false reporting are crucial.
• Harden critical infrastructure. If the worry is crypto rigs overloading a substation, upgrade the grid and require resiliency standards near bases.
• Community engagement and partnerships. Local governments, utilities and base commanders need better information-sharing — farmers with concerns are often the first to notice strange activity.
And for the paranoid among us: no, your neighbor’s soybean field is probably not rehearsing a drone ballet.
But Feith’s warning is useful in one respect: it forces a smaller question with big implications — who controls the physical space next to our most sensitive assets, and do we have the rules and resources to manage that responsibly?
This is modern geopolitics: not always tanks and fleets, sometimes tractors and servers.
The answer isn’t xenophobia; it’s a clearer, smarter policy toolbox that protects national security while keeping foreign investment in legitimate agricultural and industrial ventures.
Suburban Stealth: When Your Friendly Neighbor Is a Deep Cover Agent
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