Because Chinese Life is less worth than "spineless" French? What is that disgusting worldview of yours? You know what a blood-bank is, right?

No AI needed. The supermarket controllers had software with guessable passwords and outdated nginx, both of which had patches out for a year.

Some hardware had reached end-of-live, and were never replaced.

All were connected directly on the internet instead of secure APNs or VPNs.

This is long-standing, basic management failure, and the fines should reflect that.

Modern "frost-free" freezers have resistive heaters inside them.

Now if you can control these heaters you can pump up the temperature to quite high. And I imagine with certain uses cases actually emptying the whole thing heating it up to melt ice and then bringing temp back down is not that unreasonable process. Also allows keeping the temperature in very close range. For home appliances bit more temperature variation is acceptable.