The Legal and Policy Fallout from Data Center Strikes in the Middle East War
On March 1, drone strikes hit three Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) explicitly claimed responsibility for the attacks, citing the data centers’ role in supporting US military and intelligence networks. The consequences for global business, and for the legal frameworks intended to govern this kind of event, are only beginning to surface.
The strikes critically impaired two out of three cloud availability zones in the UAE region (ME-CENTRAL-1) and one availability zone in the Bahrain region (ME-SOUTH-1). Because multiple zones went down simultaneously, standard redundancy models failed. AWS confirmed structural damage, power disruption, fire, and water damage from suppression systems. Outages were reported by Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Emirates NBD, First Abu Dhabi Bank, payments platforms Hubpay and Alaan, data cloud company Snowflake, and the massive ride-hailing platform Careem. Recovery, AWS warned, will be prolonged.
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