Drone strikes on data centers spook Big Tech, halting Middle East projects

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Uninsurable war damage is requiring tech business to reconsider Middle East strategies.

Visitors take a look at a design of the biggest information center in the UAE under building in Abu Dhabi as the Stargate effort, a joint endeavor in between G42, Microsoft, and OpenAI, throughout the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition Conference (ADIPEC) in Abu Dhabi on November 3, 2025.

Credit: Giuseppe CACACE/ AFP through Getty Images

An information center designer has actually stopped briefly all Middle East job financial investments after among its centers was harmed by an Iranian rocket or drone attack. The choice comes as the Iran war is requiring Silicon Valley financiers and tech business to reconsider a trillion-dollar strategy to develop more AI and cloud information centers in Gulf nations.

The harmed information center is owned by Pure Data Centre Group, a London-based business that is running or establishing more than 1 gigawatt of information center capability throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. “No one’s going to encounter a burning structure, so to speak,” Pure DC CEO Gary Wojtaszek informed CNBC. “No one’s going to put in brand-new extra capital at scale to do anything up until whatever calms down.”

Information center designers are currently consuming the expenses of uninsurable war damage from the dispute, which started with a US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28. Iran mainly reacted by assaulting shipping to close down the Strait of Hormuz trade passage together with striking United States military bases and energy facilities throughout the Gulf area.

Iran likewise straight struck 2 Amazon Web Services (AWS) information centers in the United Arab Emirates, while a near-miss from an Iranian one-way attack drone harmed a 3rd AWS information center in Bahrain. The Iranian attacks triggered structural damage, interfered with power shipment, and likewise set off fire suppression systems that triggered water damage, AWS reported through its service control panel on March 1.

That resulted in extensive disturbances in cloud services for AWS clients like banks, payment platforms, the Dubai-based ride-hailing app Careem, and the information cloud service provider Snowflake.

Most importantly for Amazon’s bottom line, the business selected to waive consumer charges in its Middle East cloud area for the whole month of March 2026, as reported by The Register. That choice expense Amazon an approximated $150 million– not consisting of the harmed information centers– since existing civil law structures put the monetary concern on information center operators to take in expenses and refund customers in case of military disputes, according to Tech Policy Press.

Pure DC’s information center school on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island in the United Arab Emirates was allegedly struck by shrapnel, indicating a near-miss rather than a direct hit. The 16-acre website currently has 20 megawatts of information center capability functional in service of an unnamed hyperscale client, with the centers being developed to support AI and cloud releases. The business has actually not revealed when the occasion occurred or any possible information center disturbances and expenses arising from the occurrence.

Huge Tech in the crosshairs

It has actually been clear for a while that tech business can not pretend to be simple onlookers in the continuous dispute. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps straight threatened retaliation versus United States business that it recognized as having Israeli links and supporting military tech applications after an Iranian bank’s information center was struck by a United States or Israeli strike on March 11. The Iranian military company launched a list of “Iran’s brand-new targets” that consisted of workplaces and information centers run by Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM, Nvidia, and Oracle, and it repeated a comparable danger versus tech business on March 31 in retaliation for Israeli and United States military strikes that led to the assassination of Iranian leaders.

The Revolutionary Guard tried to make great on that danger by assaulting an Oracle information center in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on April 2, according to Data Center Dynamics. The Dubai Media Office at first dismissed the claim, it later on verified that shrapnel had actually fallen on the exterior of the Oracle center after a “effective aerial interception” by regional air defense systems.

Such events are requiring tech business to reconsider how they run in the Middle East and other areas where military dispute is a danger, according to tech publication Rest of World. Possibilities consist of scaling down from enormous information center schools to smaller sized centers dispersed more commonly, which would increase functional expenses. Forbes reported that defense business are seeing more interest in protecting information centers with anti-drone and air-defense systems.

Silicon Valley financiers and Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates might likewise require to reassess prepare for making the Middle East into a center for AI information centers along with the United States and China, Rest of World reported. United States tech business have actually each revealed strategies for information center advancements worth billions of dollars, while particular Gulf nations have actually each promised hundreds of billions of dollars for financial investment in AI chips and information.

For now, information center designer Pure DC still sees the Middle East as a “long-lasting chance” regardless of the short-term financial investment time out, according to CEO Gary Wojtaszek in his CNBC interview. On April 27, the business revealed it had “recommitted its concentrate on the Middle East” after protecting approval from a United Arab Emirates energy business to broaden information center capability at the center that was harmed by shrapnel.

Jeremy Hsu is a press reporter checking out a vast array of subjects throughout deep tech and AI. He has actually formerly composed for New Scientist, Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Wired, Undark Magazine and MIT Tech Review, amongst numerous other publications, about subjects such as deepfakes, information centers, drones, battery tech, robotics, and GPS jamming. He likewise has a Master of Arts in Journalism from NYU, and a bachelor’s degree from University of Pennsylvania in History and Sociology of Science, with a small in English.

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