Iran strikes AWS infra: Why data centres have become a strategic war target

The episode underlines a new reality: the infrastructure underpinning the internet is now part of the strategic landscape of modern conflict.

Just as oil fields and power plants once defined economic warfare, data centres — housing the world’s computing power and digital services — may increasingly sit in the crosshairs during geopolitical crises.

Drone strikes on Amazon data centres

The disruption followed an escalation in hostilities involving Iran and its regional adversaries, after the US and Israel carried out targeted bombing in Iran earlier this week, leading to Iran launching several waves of retaliatory attacks. Initially, Amazon said “objects” struck an AWS data centre in the UAE, sparking a fire that forced authorities to cut power to the facility. The shutdown led to outages in the affected availability zone and had ripple effects on services in both the UAE and Bahrain.

Subsequent updates indicated that at least three facilities were damaged, including two directly hit in the UAE and another impacted by a nearby strike in Bahrain. Several server racks and cooling systems were affected, further slowing restoration.

“We are providing an update on the ongoing service disruptions affecting the AWS Middle East (UAE) Region…and the AWS Middle East (Bahrain) Region… Due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, both affected regions have experienced physical impacts to infrastructure as a result of drone strikes. In the UAE, two of our facilities were directly struck, while in Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities caused physical impacts to our infrastructure. These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage,” Amazon said in an update early on March 3 (Tuesday). 

While the full extent of the physical damage remains unclear, the incident is significant because it represents one of the first instances of a major global cloud provider’s data centre being directly hit during military action.

Why data centres could become wartime targets

Modern businesses increasingly depend on cloud infrastructure. Instead of hosting their own servers, companies run applications, store data and manage digital services on remote data centres operated by firms such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

These facilities host thousands of servers and power everything from banking apps and e-commerce platforms to government systems and artificial intelligence tools.

As a result, a single data centre outage can ripple across multiple sectors. For instance, during the Middle East disruption, some financial institutions relying on AWS reported outages to their digital platforms.

This centralisation has made cloud infrastructure a critical backbone of the digital economy.

The drone strikes on AWS facilities reflects a broader shift in warfare. Traditionally, military operations targeted oil facilities, pipelines, ports or power plants — assets that could cripple an opponent’s economy. But in the digital era, data centres and communications networks play a similar strategic role.

There are several reasons for this.

First, data centres concentrate enormous computing power in a few locations. Disabling even one facility can affect thousands of organisations simultaneously.

Second, modern militaries and governments themselves rely heavily on cloud computing for intelligence, logistics and communications.

Third, cloud infrastructure supports financial markets, digital payments and e-commerce, meaning disruptions can quickly translate into economic instability.

Incidentally, West Asia has been positioning itself as a major global hub for cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure. Technology giants have announced billions of dollars in investments across the region to build data centres and AI computing facilities.