The Silent Siege of the French Machine Shop

Jean-Luc adjusted his spectacles to inspect a titanium rivet no larger than a cherry stone, his fingers smelling faintly of industrial cutting oil. For thirty years, his workshop on the outskirts of Toulouse has shaped these tiny, essential components for the wings of European passenger jets. To him, security meant heavy padlock gates, steel shutters, and a very large French Mastiff asleep by the entrance. He did not know that his modest server, humming quietly under a stack of old invoices, was probed by automated scanners from distant networks over forty thousand times last Tuesday.

The physical world of French