There's that angle, yeah, but it's the creation of a single point of failure that I was thinking about. And not even in all that tech-centric a way.

My hometown used to make a sizable chunk of the US's fasteners, and there was real concern during the Cold War that dropping a single bomb on it could cripple the entire nation's industrial capacity. Here, it seems like there may be an unacceptable strategic risk that a bomb dropped on Moline, Illinois could cripple the entire nation's food production capacity.

If left on the open internet and not an intranet.

All networks have vulnerabilities, regardless if they're connected to the internet.