Iran's attacks on Amazon data centers in UAE, Bahrain signal a new kind of war

https://fortune.com/2026/03/09/irans-attacks-on-amazon-data-centers-in-uae-bahrain-signal-a-new-kind-of-war-as-ai-plays-an-increasingly-strategic-role-analysts-say/

24•rawgabbit•1h ago

Comments

whackernews•1h ago

A new kind of war where people won’t be able to get next day delivery on the 5m USB-C cable that they ordered.

fastball•1h ago

That is... not what AWS data centers are primarily used for in 2026.

whackernews•59m ago

You mean they’re not used to sell me cheap Chinese USB-C cables?

esseph•20m ago

AWS is also running government, military, medical, university etc systems. Banking.

andrew_gs•1h ago

Or can't withdraw money from their FAB bank accounts as it's dependent on AWS infra. This is pretty much entirely to do with AWS and not the retail website.

dragonwriter•1h ago

Yes, Amazon Retail being the sole significant customer of AWS, I guess?

samrus•54m ago

Bro thinks amazon is the onky thing that uses AWS

paxys•1h ago

> The tech industry often talks about “the cloud” as though it were something abstract and untouchable. But the cloud runs on data centers, those data centers have an address, and that address can be hit by a drone.

Nominating this as the best opening line I have read in a while.

newsclues•1h ago

Information and logistics win wars, and you need lots of compute and storage in a modern war.

journal•1h ago

HN could post the IP address of commenters but they wont.

imglorp•51m ago

People used to add contact info in their .signature files (!): HTTP, IRC, (etc) and ICBM...

prepend•1h ago

Isn’t this just Iran trying to hit anything “of value” and it really a strategic target? I doubt they are thinking things through vs just firing off semi randomly.

perfmode•1h ago

When resources are finite and require precise guidance, why would they fire semi randomly when they can be strategic?

paxys•1h ago

Striking public infrastructure is the oldest kind of war there is.

The article does raise an important question though - would an AWS data center be considered a civilian target or military?

trhway•1h ago

Buying an antidrone and even antimissile system like say Pantsir-S1, Skyranger 30 or similar is just few million dollars - peanuts compare to the cost of the datacenter to be protected. Once AMAZN starts doing it for themselves, they will possibly also start air-defense-as-a-service using spare capacity.

With all the money and assets and the whole value of business, the Big Tech has already started to move into energy, and i think the defense, starting with self-defense, will be among the nearest-future next domains they will move into.

mc3301•56m ago

If everyone has an antidrone/antimissile system, then everyone will finally be safe.

trhway•28m ago

the previous world order based on sovereign states is quickly coming to end. Emerging world order is based on force, and the large corps have more money than many states. The only thing they are missing is the rights of a sovereign entity. Well in a world order driven by force, the rights you have is the rights that you've obtained by force. I think we'll soon see, by analogy with corporate personhood, some version of corporate statehood.

YVoyiatzis•1h ago

WTF are Amazon’s data centers doung in the UAE? Excuse my ignorance, but why there?

samrus•55m ago

Latency

unsnap_biceps•51m ago

I would image data sovereignty is also a big factor.

achille•51m ago

  - local data residency & sovereignty
  - latency
  - bandwidth 
  - regulatory climate
  - competition

uae is business friendly

all cloud providers have middle east presence

refineries generate terabytes of sensor data per hour

the population and people there produce and consume a lot of data

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