If you can jailbreak a phone, you can jailbreak a tractor. And if you can jailbreak a John Deere tractor, you can play Doom on its touchscreen.

At DefCon in August, Australian hacker Sick Codes showed how to do just that on John Deere’s 2630 and 4240 model tractors.

Why it matters: While playing a video game on a tractor’s computer system may just seem like a stunt, the demonstration brought up important questions about John Deere’s cybersecurity practices—questions made all the more urgent by its ongoing push to pivot its business model toward software and digital subscriptions.

• The company unveiled a self-driving tractor at CES earlier this year and is investing billions of dollars to make farming equipment internet-connected and partially automated—able to make decisions based on analysis of cloud-based datasets managed by the John Deere Operations Center.
• By 2030, CEO John May expects that 10% of the company’s annual revenue will come from software subscription fees.

Big picture: Transitioning from a tractor company to a “data-harvesting conglomerate, whatever it is,” is a steep learning curve, Sick Codes told us, and in his view, John Deere has made some missteps.

In response to questions, John Deere spokesperson Jen Hartmann pointed us to previous statements on cybersecurity.

Keep reading about Deere’s apparent cyber challenges here.—GD

In 2017, an underdeveloped 12-acre neighborhood on Toronto’s waterfront became a canvas for the city of the future, as imagined by Sidewalk Labs, a Google affiliate specializing in smart-city development.

Sidewalk had a $1.3 billion high-tech vision to remake the way that cities were developed by using tech from automated vehicles to underground waste management.

But the project fell apart in 2020 due in part to economic uncertainty in the wake of the pandemic and after criticism from residents and privacy advocates.

• Sidewalk Labs ultimately pulled out of the project entirely before being reabsorbed into Alphabet in 2021.

Big picture: The project was arguably the most high-profile failure in the short history of smart-city projects, with ripple effects for smart-city endeavors beyond Toronto.

Zoom in: In a new book published last week, journalist Josh O’Kane took an in-depth look at how the project broke down.

We talked with O’Kane about Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy to learn more about how the splashy project failed and the broader challenges of deciding who shapes the future of cities.

Read the interview here.—JM

Here’s a pair of facts about the ocean floor:

• Humans have only mapped ~20% of it, and it’s “one of the largest wilderness areas left” on the planet, as oceanographer Craig Smith put it to the New York Times.  
• It could hold a staggering amount of the scarce metals required to power the EV transition.

Take these two things together, and you can understand the controversy surrounding deep-sea mining, a practice we asked you all about in last week’s reader poll.

Your responses reflected the deep division over this practice, with an almost exactly even 50/50 split as to whether deep-sea mining should be legal: 51% of our ~1,450 respondents said yes, while 49% said no.

Zoom out: Last week, The Metals Company received long-awaited approval to begin testing the extraction of iron and manganese nodules from the ocean floor between Hawaii and Mexico.

It’s the first time since the 1970s that such approval has been granted, per the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and “about 100 people” will observe the environmental impact of the project from a separate vessel.

This week’s poll: Do you plan to purchase the new satellite-connected iPhone 14?

Yes
No

Stat: Industrial automation surged in China last year. In 2021, the country installed more than 243,000 industrial robots, per IFR data via the WSJ—just about equal to the amount installed by every other country on earth combined.

Quote: “With EVs, right now it’s like, ‘You build it, and they come’…We’re trying to electrify the lineup as quickly as possible.”—Steven Center, COO for Kia US, to the Wall Street Journal

Read: Will coders be the first to get replaced by AI systems?

Learn: Get a jump start with the basics of business and lay the foundation to get ahead with Morning Brew’s Business Essentials Accelerator. Our September cohort starts next Monday—sign up here.

Excel: The CFO role has changed a lot, which means the habits that make for a successful CFO have changed too. Learn the 7 habits of today’s highly effective CFOs with this guide from Oracle NetSuite.*

Safety sells: Thanks to a recent spike in cyberattacks, cybersecurity startups are more popular than ever. Learn which sectors are seeing the most growth—and detect key investment areas—in our latest article, sponsored by Cisco.

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

T-minus one week until our first-ever Emerging Tech Brew Summit!

We’ve got a ton in store, from lab-grown meals to the future of mRNA and everything in between. It’s not too late to join us virtually and experience all the fun for free—RSVP today.

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• Google, Amazon face new protests over contract with Israeli government and military
• Why Apple is spending $450 million on satellites for its new iPhone
• Tomorrow’s top trends in cybersecurity, according to VCs