Earlier this week, Iranian drones hit three Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, triggering global outages in online services. Experts believe the strikes were the first instance of American big tech companies being targeted in a military operation.
The strikes caused “structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage,” the tech giant admitted in a March 2 update.
Iranian Revolutionary Guard-affiliated news claimed that Iran had targeted both Amazon and Microsoft facilities, as the Financial Times reports, though the latter has yet to experience any outages in the region.
The incidents highlight how data centers have become major targets on the battlefield. The surrounding region in the Middle East has been a major draw for US hyperscalers, as CNBC points out, which could mean that even more American assets are at risk.
Escalating the stakes is the rise of AI, which requires powerful data centers that have already emerged as flashpoints of controversy far from any theater of war. Companies including OpenAI, Oracle, and Nvidia have announced major investments in the UAE, including major data centers and a sprawling “AI campus” as part of president Donald Trump’s “Stargate” push, a troubled $500 billion initiative announced almost immediately following his inauguration.
“Iran and proxies have targeted oil fields in the past, but their attacks this week on UAE data centers show they are now considered critical infrastructure,” executive director of the geopolitical unit at advisory Hilco Global, Patrick Murphy, told CNBC.
The strikes also highlight the growing demand for infrastructure security to keep operations online, which according to Murphy could result in governments bringing data centers in the Middle East “into national security planning frameworks alongside energy facilities, telecommunications networks, water treatment plants and transportation hubs.”
Fortifying these targets may be difficult as data centers can be knocked offline by targeting turbines, AC units, and other exposed features.
“The Iranians view data centres as part of the conflict,” Center for Strategic and International Studies director Matt Peal told the FT. “This is one way of having an actual impact on the region.”
Meanwhile, Amazon is reeling from the growing geopolitical instability threatening its operations.
“Even as we work to restore these facilities, the ongoing conflict in the region means that the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable,” the company told clients in a note. “We strongly recommend that customers with workloads running in the Middle East take action now to migrate those workloads to alternate AWS Regions.”
