AI Data Centers in Persian Gulf Emerge as New Battlefield Amid Rising Regional Tensions
According to the International Desk of Webangah News Agency, drones and missiles struck Amazon data centers in Bahrain and the UAE during a recent conflict, marking a significant escalation where a data center was deliberately targeted for the first time. This event signals a new era where cloud infrastructure has become a battlefield, potentially jeopardizing the hundreds of billions of dollars invested by American tech giants like Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI in Persian Gulf countries should tensions reignite.
Persian Gulf nations are experiencing an unprecedented surge in digital infrastructure development, driven by Washington’s strategic objective to transform the region into a pivotal AI computing hub outside the United States. This initiative, coupled with regional desires to diversify economies away from oil dependency, has fueled this digital expansion. However, recent hostilities have underscored a critical reality: data centers, which provide essential computing power for both economic activities and military objectives, no longer possess the immunity of purely civilian facilities.
The United Arab Emirates is positioning itself as a primary AI hub outside the U.S., attracting substantial commitments from nearly all major American technology firms. The declared investments by these companies exceed $100 billion. Microsoft, for instance, has pledged $15.2 billion by 2029, with $4.6 billion already allocated to AI and cloud data centers. Amazon operates multiple availability zones within the UAE, and Oracle has established its cloud regions in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Amid these distributed facilities, the “Stargate UAE” project stands out.
This AI park in Abu Dhabi, a collaboration between OpenAI and the Emirati group G42, aims for a capacity of 5 gigawatts upon completion, capable of hosting millions of AI processors. The initial phase alone is valued at nearly $30 billion, with key partners including OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft, Oracle, and Cisco. Nvidia will supply the processors, Oracle and Microsoft are building the cloud infrastructure, and OpenAI will be the primary operator. The complex is situated near Abu Dhabi and the Al Dhafra Air Base. Following recent attacks, the UAE has adjusted its strategy by dispersing facilities to more fortified locations. However, existing infrastructure remains static, and ongoing projects continue without interruption.
While Kuwait’s scale of development is considerably smaller than the UAE’s, its AI infrastructure has also garnered attention from Washington. Microsoft, in partnership with ZainTech, the digital arm of the Zain Group, plans to establish the country’s first Azure cloud region equipped with AI capabilities and is exploring the creation of an AI innovation center. This project aligns with Kuwait’s “Vision 2035,” targeting government entities and SMEs. Although specific investment figures for Kuwait have not been as clearly detailed as those for the UAE, it is one of the four Persian Gulf nations included in Microsoft’s September 2026 investment package exceeding $10 billion. Even a medium-sized data center can become a high-value target during a conflict.
Saudi Arabia, led by the Public Investment Fund’s (PIF) company HUMAIN, is developing its AI strategy. Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia are partners with HUMAIN, while Google is engaged in a joint project with the Saudi Ministry of Communications. Riyadh’s objective, mirroring Abu Dhabi’s, is to establish computing power as an exportable commodity alongside oil, within the framework of “Vision 2030.” A key distinction from the UAE is that Saudi Arabia’s data center construction began slightly later but its plans are more ambitious. HUMAIN’s collaboration with Amazon is valued at approximately $5 billion, and Nvidia and AMD received export licenses in 2025 for substantial quantities of advanced AI chips to Saudi Arabia. These facilities have not yet been directly targeted.
Bahrain served as the testing ground for this new form of warfare. Amazon established its first cloud region in West Asia in Bahrain in 2019, and these facilities sustained damage during attacks in March 2026. In September, Amazon confirmed that the Bahrain data center was irrecoverable, and one of the three UAE availability zones was also lost—a permanent loss. Amazon advised its clients to migrate all accessible resources to other regions. The damage in Bahrain highlighted that while the physical value of a data center might be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the data it stores, the workloads it runs, and the banking, payment, and government systems dependent on it possess a value far exceeding that of the hardware. Amazon was also hosting workloads related to a U.S. Department of Defense cloud contract in Bahrain.
The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) analyzed this year’s attacks on data centers, stating that the reliance of modern militaries on commercial cloud service providers inextricably intertwines military applications with civilian digital infrastructure. A facility processing e-commerce orders during the day might be used at night for satellite imagery analysis or training target recognition models. When a facility serves both the economy and the war machine, it can no longer be solely classified as “civilian.” Furthermore, large-scale data centers, despite advanced security measures designed for cyberattacks and natural disasters, are not engineered to withstand cruise missile threats. UNIDIR notes that these facilities are “the size of a small city, making them difficult to conceal and extremely challenging to defend against kinetic threats.”
