This is pretty silly. If China ever enters a shooting war with the US, their larger concern will probably be how to feed themselves, since they account for something like a quarter of all our food exports (80% of all US soybeans go to China!), and they import a comparable amount of food from our allies.

Burnt crops and salted fields.

This is a ridiculous hypothetical to begin with, fear over stuff like this is how we end up with nonsense farm policy.

I don't think it's that silly.

I have major concerns with how automation and interconnectivity have taken off faster than security efforts can keep up. It needn't be a state actor, even - a disgruntled worker at John Deere might push an update to a million tractors that burns out their motors, for example.

The next World War might just be us waking up one day and the lights don't work.