Why Iran targeted Amazon data centres, what that does – and doesn’t – change about warfare

Dennis Murphy For The Conversation

Atlanta: Before dawn on March 1, 2026, Iranian Shahed drones struck two Amazon Web Services data centres in the United Arab Emirates.

A third commercial data centre in Bahrain was hit, though it is less clear whether it was deliberately targeted. This is the first time that a country has deliberately targeted commercial data centres during wartime.

Iran's state media issued a statement on March 31 that it will target American companies, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Meta, Oracle, Intel, HP, IBM, Cisco, Dell, Palantir and Nvidia.

The Financial Times reported that an additional Iranian drone struck an Amazon data centre in Bahrain on April 1. And Iranian state media claimed that Iranian forces attacked an Oracle data centre in Dubai on April 2.

Iran has also been on the receiving end of such attacks. A data centre in Tehran operated by Iran’s state-run Bank Sepah was struck by a missile – apparently fired by US or Israeli forces – on March 11, according to a report in The Jerusalem Post.

Data centres have been targets of espionage and cyberattacks in the past, notably when Ukrainian hackers destroyed data stored in a Russian military-affiliated data centre in 2024. These strikes in the Persian Gulf region, however, were physical attacks. Drones damaged buildings.

Advances in artificial intelligence have increased the importance of data centres. The US military, in particular, has made great use of AI systems for decision support in its attacks on Iran and Venezuela. Given how important data centres are, Iranian forces could be targeting the infrastructure that Iran’s leaders believe is supporting strikes on Iran.

It is not altogether clear that these particular data centres were used by the US military. Instead, the attacks may have been part of a broader effort to punish the United Arab Emirates for its ties with the US In my experience as a PhD candidate at Georgia Tech studying how technology drives changes in international security, I don’t think the attacks signal any significant change in the nature of warfare. But they are forcing nations to recognise that data centres are targets of war – even if they don’t directly support military operations.

Data centres and the cloud

The United States military is increasingly incorporating advanced AI capabilities into its decision support systems. From the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to supporting military strikes against Iran, the US has been using AI, especially Anthropic’s Claude, for intelligence analysis and operational support.

AI is unlocking faster ways to carry out operations in war, but the AI tools the military often uses are not located on a plane or ship. When a service member uses Claude, the computing infrastructure that powers the model and its analysis usually goes to a secure Amazon Web Services cloud that hosts secret government data and software tools.

Commercial data centres are where the cloud lives. The next time you pull up Netflix and watch your favourite shows, you are likely streaming the programming from a data centre, possibly AWS. When AWS data centres go down, outages affect all sorts of entertainment, news and government functions.

With AI as a driver of economic growth, data centres are key forms of infrastructure. They ensure that AI can continue to run, as well as much of the underlying internet that governments and industry rely on. When Iran attacked the UAE’s data centres, it caused widespread disruption to the local banking system.

Commercial data centres enable most of the technology that runs the modern world, including AI systems. Disrupting them is key to disrupting a country’s military and society. Given that AWS provides and operates many of the commercial data centres where the cloud lives, it is likely that its data centres will continue to be targeted in conflict.

Going after US allies

Researchers at Just Security noted on March 12, 2026, that the United States requires cloud-computing service providers to store government and military data within the US or on Department of Defence bases: “Moving such data to Amazon data centres in the Gulf region would require special authorisation; we are unaware if that has been granted.” Nevertheless, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed the strikes were against data centres supporting “the enemy’s” military and intelligence activities. And 10 days after the initial attack on the data centres, an Iranian news agency claimed that major tech company data centres and other physical assets in the region were considered “enemy technology infrastructure.” Instead of military reasons, Iran may well have targeted the UAE to rattle the global economy and garner attention. Given the prominence of the Gulf as a major recipient of US technological investment, the attack may also have been a symbolic one aimed at the heart of US-Gulf cooperation. AI infrastructure, such as commercial data centres, is a growing part of US leadership in the region, and this war could jeopardise the future of AI infrastructure in the Gulf.

Growing importance, easy targets

Though data centres are increasingly important for national security, the economy and society at large, it can be tempting to suggest these strikes represent a fundamental shift in the nature of war.

While that is a possibility, it is important to remember that Iran launched thousands of missiles and drones at targets in the UAE and Bahrain. Though the vast majority were intercepted, the four that struck data centres are a small portion of the ones that got through to civilian targets in those countries, including strikes on airports and hotels.

The relative vulnerability of commercial data centres – they are large, relatively fragile and lack dedicated air defences – suggests that the ones in the UAE and Bahrain may have been targets of opportunity or convenience. In other words, they were hit because they could be hit.

Nevertheless, it seems likely that as the use of AI tools and other cloud-based resources continues to grow in importance for countries around the world, commercial data centres will be targets in future conflicts.

The author is Ph.D. Student of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology