Breached: A chronicle of cargo theft

Freight train robberies grabbed headlines in late 2021. Amidst a supply chain crisis, stark images of train tracks strewn with Amazon packages went viral. Consumers, awaiting delayed orders, spotted their items among the sea of cardboard. To reassure anxious shoppers, California’s governor joined the cleanup, while rail companies spent millions on added security. Breached asks: What makes container freight so sacred yet so vulnerable? The story is told from the POV of a local worker, drawn from his diary. His alienated existence unravels when he witnesses the robbers in action. A hidden landscape of logistics, infrastructure, and surveillance snaps into focus, both violent and fragile. The turning point comes when he trains himself to read the landscape like a looter, discovering a way to channel his disaffection into a strike against capitalist ideology.