Middle East AI infrastructure targeted in military strikes

Recent military conflicts have turned data centers into physical targets, specifically impacting the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure in the Middle East. Reports indicate that Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have suffered damage or disruptions due to strikes linked to the war involving Iran.

In the UAE, drone strikes reportedly knocked two of three availability zones offline, causing service outages that persisted for months. In Bahrain, AWS urged customers to migrate workloads following damage to its facilities, eventually leading to a period where the region became unavailable. Additionally, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has claimed responsibility for strikes on data center infrastructure in the region, including an Oracle facility in Dubai.

These incidents represent a significant shift in modern warfare, exposing new physical security vulnerabilities for US-linked cloud infrastructure and raising critical questions regarding insurance, resilience planning, and the future of global data center deployment.