The swift proliferation of American-owned data hubs throughout the Middle East has unveiled a fresh arena for Iranian reprisal against the United States, further complicating the Gulf states’ aspirations to establish multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure within the area.
Unmanned aerial vehicle assaults on Amazon Web Services installations this week in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain underscore the susceptibility of cloud infrastructure – prominent emblems of US technological might in the region, difficult to safeguard against aerial assaults.
Fars News Agency, a media outlet linked with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, declared on Thursday that Iran had targeted Amazon and Microsoft facilities in recent drone attacks.
Experts suggest that Amazon’s installations were likely the intended targets of Iran. Microsoft stated it had not experienced any service disruptions in the locale.
These strikes signify what is believed to be the globe’s inaugural military assault against the US “hyperscalers” that dominate the worldwide cloud computing marketplace.
This circumstance could instigate a deterrent effect on the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s intentions to invest billions of dollars in indigenous AI infrastructure over the forthcoming years, a vital component of these oil-rich nations’ endeavors to diversify their economies.
“The Iranians perceive data centres as an element of the conflict,” remarked Matt Pearl, a director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research institution. “This presents a method for exerting a tangible influence on the region.”
Amazon’s cloud division, AWS, has been striving for several days to reinstate services in Bahrain and the UAE, subsequent to data centre attacks that caused widespread service outages across the region, impacting consumer applications including online banking.
The corporation confirmed that two of its installations in the UAE were “directly impacted” by drones, incapacitating two of the group’s three so-called availability zones, which facilitate redundancy in the event of failure. One site in the region is situated near Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai, according to DC Byte, a data centre intelligence firm.
An AWS data hub in Bahrain was also affected by a proximate attack. The group manages at least three facilities on the Gulf island, including one located in Hamala, close to a local military base and the King Fahd Causeway, a road bridge connecting the island nation with Saudi Arabia. Another installation abuts an aluminium smelter, while one site is adjacent to the University of Bahrain.
“Even as we endeavor to restore these facilities, the ongoing hostilities in the region indicate that the broader operational climate in the Middle East remains unpredictable,” AWS informed its clientele. “We strongly advise that customers with workloads running in the Middle East take immediate action to transfer those workloads to alternative AWS Regions.”
Nonetheless, relocating IT workloads can prove intricate and costly for the hyperscalers’ corporate clients, particularly if sensitive data must traverse international boundaries.
Several defense and technology analysts posited that the data centre assaults appeared intentional and formed part of a pattern of Iranian strikes on civilian infrastructure, encompassing airports, energy installations, and ports.
Google and Microsoft, the other two principal US cloud computing service providers, declined to comment on the preventative measures they were implementing in response to the escalating conflict in the region.
Microsoft announced just last month its intention to inaugurate a new Azure facility in Saudi Arabia by the close of this year, serving customers such as local utility provider Acwa and Qiddiya Investment Company, one of the kingdom’s flagship “giga projects”.
Owen Rogers, senior research director for cloud computing at Uptime Institute, an IT infrastructure consulting firm, believes the AWS attack represented the first instance of a US Big Tech company’s data centre being targeted in a military operation.
He noted that while data centres catering to military requirements might be smaller and “concealed,” a substantial commercial facility like AWS’ would typically serve thousands of customers in the region, creating considerable “concentration risk.”
Sam Winter-Levy, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), stated that data centres in the region were augmenting their strategic significance for the US and its allies as Gulf regimes sought to cultivate themselves into major AI hubs.
The drone strikes underscored that these could be “vulnerable targets,” Winter-Levy added, possessing distinct characteristics including air conditioning units, diesel generators, and gas turbines. “They are sprawling complexes, and if you disable some of the chillers, you can render them completely inoperative.”
Saudi Arabia’s Humain and the UAE’s G42, two of the Gulf’s state-backed AI consortiums, have pledged to fund extensive data-centre clusters in the region and have inked substantial agreements with Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft. The UAE is also constructing one of OpenAI’s immense “Stargate” clusters in Abu Dhabi.
“[These assaults] could fundamentally alter the risk assessment for private investors, insurers, and the technology companies themselves [to invest in the region],” observed Jessica Brandt, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The Gulf presented itself as a secure alternative to other markets. That assertion just became more challenging to uphold.”
One US tech industry veteran now residing in the Gulf remarked that even though the UAE would likely still wish to finance Stargate, the conflict could hinder such projects from attracting the international engineering and construction personnel required for its development.
He likened the OpenAI project to Intel’s multibillion-dollar chip manufacturing facilities in Israel, which are safeguarded by the Israeli military and encircled by air defenses. “One must incorporate protection; it is a fundamental requirement” for a project of Stargate’s magnitude and expense, he asserted.
Mohammed Soliman, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI), a DC-based think-tank, emphasized that the responsibility lay with regional leaders to implement protective measures for commercial facilities.
“You cannot add a distinct layer of defense for data centres,” he stated. “This pertains to air defense and is applicable not only here, but also in Taiwan and Ukraine.”
Soliman mentioned that the companies who had invested in the region were aware of some of the inherent risks in the area, but cautioned that the US had “made a political determination” to integrate several Gulf states as “part of its AI ecosystem.”
“This will not deter anyone from constructing data centres,” he affirmed.
However, the ease with which Iran was capable of targeting data centres has provoked uncertainties regarding how AI infrastructure can be safeguarded globally.
CEIP’s Winter-Levy remarked: “This serves as a precursor of what is impending, and these types of attacks will not be confined to the Middle East.”