Amazon site exposed in Middle East conflict

Amazon said one of its data centers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was struck by “objects” amid fallout from the US-Israel war against Iran, underscoring how vulnerable critical digital infrastructure can be in times of conflict.

The facility was cut off from the power grid and sustained fire damage. It was not immediately clear whether the site was deliberately targeted or hit by falling debris.

The incident has drawn attention to the risks facing data centers, which underpin everything from video streaming and banking systems to government services and artificial intelligence workloads.

Data centers are “critical assets” because they store applications and data used worldwide, said Jonathan Hjembo of telecom research firm TeleGeography. Companies place infrastructure close to users to reduce latency, making regions like the Middle East key hubs for cloud expansion in recent years.

Major cloud providers have built multiple facilities across the Gulf, with the UAE emerging as a leading site due to political stability and strong energy capacity, according to Cinzia Bianco of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Facilities are typically designed with redundancy in mind. Operators install battery backups and diesel generators to maintain uptime if grid power fails. In this case, Amazon said firefighters ordered generators shut down after a blaze broke out at the affected site.

Amazon Web Services advised clients to back up data and shift workloads to other regions in its global network, a standard failover strategy.

Security at data centers is usually tight, with biometric access controls, guards and reinforced perimeters. But experts note that commercial operators cannot realistically harden facilities against missile strikes or large-scale military activity.

Swapna Subramani of Structure Research said cloud providers in the region must weigh physical security, geographic exposure and geopolitical risk. Gartner analyst Rene Buest said it was unlikely the site was deliberately targeted, suggesting the damage could have been collateral from nearby infrastructure strikes.

Still, analysts warn that as computing power becomes more concentrated, risks grow. The AI boom has driven the construction of massive data campuses consuming gigawatts of electricity and housing billions of dollars in hardware.

In the UAE, a five-gigawatt AI campus backed by US tech firms is under development. The country has invested heavily in AI infrastructure and secured access to advanced chips.