FT: Iran hits Amazon data centres in jolt to Gulf AI drive

Pic.: thecsrjournal.in

Drone strikes on Amazon Web Services facilities this week in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain highlight the vulnerability of cloud facilities — prominent symbols of US tech power in the region and hard to defend against air attack, ‘Financial Times’ writes.

The rapid expansion of American-owned data centres in the Middle East has opened up a new front for Iran’s retaliation against the US, complicating Gulf ambitions to build multibillion-dollar AI facilities in the region.

Fars News Agency, an outlet affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said on Thursday that Iran targeted Amazon and Microsoft facilities in recent drone strikes.

The strikes mark what is believed to be the world’s first military attack against the US “hyperscalers” that dominate the global cloud computing market.

That could create a chilling effect on the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s plans to spend billions of dollars on local AI infrastructure in the coming years, a crucial plank of the oil-rich states’ efforts to diversify their economies.

“The Iranians view data centres as part of the conflict,” said Matt Pearl, a director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank. “This is one way of having an actual impact on the region.”

Amazon’s cloud unit AWS has for several days been working to recover services in Bahrain and the UAE, after data centre attacks took down services across the region, affecting consumer apps including online banking.

The company confirmed that two of its facilities in the UAE were “directly struck” by drones, knocking out two of the group’s three so-called availability zones, which help provide redundancy in case of failure. One site in the region is close to Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai, according to DC Byte, a data centre intelligence group.

An AWS data centre in Bahrain was also affected by a nearby attack. The group operates at least three facilities on the Gulf island including one located in Hamala, near a local military base and the King Fahd Causeway, a road bridge connecting the island state with Saudi Arabia. Another facility borders an aluminium smelter, while one site sits adjacent to the University of Bahrain.

“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,” AWS told clients. “We strongly recommend that customers with workloads running in the Middle East take action now to migrate those workloads to alternate AWS Regions.”

But moving IT workloads can be complex and expensive for the hyperscalers’ corporate customers, especially if sensitive data must be moved across borders.

Owen Rogers, senior research director for cloud computing at Uptime Institute, an IT infrastructure consultancy, believes the AWS attack was the first time a US Big Tech company’s data centre had been targeted in a military operation.

Saudi Arabia’s Humain and the UAE’s G42, two of the Gulf’s state-backed AI groups, have committed to financing vast data-centre clusters in the region and signed large deals with Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft. The UAE is also building one of OpenAI’s huge “Stargate” clusters in Abu Dhabi.

“[These strikes] could fundamentally change the risk calculus for private investors, insurers and the tech companies themselves [to invest in the region],” said Jessica Brandt, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The Gulf sold itself as a safe alternative to other markets. That argument just got harder to make.”

The ease with which Iran was able to target data centres has raised doubts over how AI infrastructure can be protected worldwide.

CEIP’s Winter-Levy said: “This is a harbinger of what’s to come and these types of attacks are not going to be limited to the Middle East.”

Major US tech firms are potential Iranian targets

Iran’s list of potential targets includes offices and assets of major American tech companies with operations in the region, Iranian state media reported Wednesday, CNN quotes.

The list, published by state-affiliated Tasnim news agency, is entitled “Iran’s new targets” and includes various regional offices, as well as cloud, data and development centers of major American tech firms with operations in the Middle East.

“With the expansion of the regional war into an infrastructure war, the scope of Iran’s legitimate targets gradually becomes broader,” the post reads.

Included on the list are offices claimed to be associated with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, IBM, Oracle and Palantir in Israel and around the region, including in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

read more in our Telegram-channel https://t.me/The_International_Affairs