Iranian drones deliberately struck AWS data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain this week. According to the Financial Times (FT), it marked the first time a military operation targeted the infrastructure of a leading American technology company.
The Fars News Agency, close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, claimed on Thursday to have carried out strikes against Amazon and Microsoft facilities in the region. While Microsoft denied any operational incident, AWS confirmed that two of its sites in the UAE had been “directly hit” by drones, taking two of its three regional availability zones offline.
A data center in Bahrain was also hit in a nearby strike. AWS advised its customers to migrate their data to other regions, acknowledging that “the operational environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable.”
Difficult targets to defend
Data centers have features that make them vulnerable targets: diesel generators, gas turbines, and especially their massive cooling systems. “These are sprawling facilities, and if you knock out the coolers, you can take them offline entirely,” explains Sam Winter-Levy, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to the FT.
Matt Pearl of the American think tank CSIS sums up the logic behind these offensives: “The Iranians view data centers as a component of the conflict. It’s a way to have a real impact in the region.”
Is the Gulf’s AI boom at risk?
The implications of these strikes extend far beyond the military sphere. The Gulf had bet its image as a safe haven for stability to attract massive investments in artificial intelligence. Saudi Arabia, through its entity Human, and the United Arab Emirates, via G42, have committed billions alongside Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft to build vast clusters of data centers.
Abu Dhabi is also home to one of OpenAI’s large “Stargate” projects. As recently as last month, Microsoft announced the forthcoming opening of a new Azure data center in Saudi Arabia.
“These strikes could fundamentally alter the risk calculus for private investors, insurers, and tech companies themselves,” warns Jessica Brandt of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The Gulf had positioned itself as a safer alternative to other markets. That argument is losing some of its force.”
A global warning
Beyond the capital, the new climate of insecurity could affect the recruitment of engineering and construction talent, according to an American tech veteran based in the region cited by the FT. He compares Stargate to Intel’s chip fabs in Israel, protected by the army and shielded by anti-air defenses: “You have to bake protection in from the start; it’s a must for a project of this scale.”
Yet the attack raises a question that extends beyond the Middle East. “This is a taste of what is to come, and these kinds of attacks will not be limited to this region,” Winter-Levy warns. As digital infrastructure becomes the nerve center of the world’s economic and technological warfare, its physical protection has become a sovereign issue in its own right.
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