In early March, three Amazon Web Services data centers in the Middle East were damaged by drone strikes attributed to Iran, with immediate effects on internet services in the region. Two sites located in the United Arab Emirates were directly targeted, and the damage, combined with a power outage, led AWS to suspend its operations there.
In Bahrain, a third data center was indirectly affected by an explosion nearby. As a result, outages and slowdowns were experienced in both countries, and at this stage, none of the affected facilities have fully recovered. This kind of incident reminds the reader of a simple truth: the internet has addresses and walls.
The cloud is becoming a target, in the literal sense.
What's at stake is a change in status: digital infrastructures are no longer just technical equipment; they are becoming strategic assets, and therefore targets. The consulting firm Artefact speaks of "a turning point for the region," and the expression rings true given that data centers now concentrate the services of both businesses and government agencies, with a domino effect as soon as one link breaks.
The threat doesn't stop at physical attacks: undersea cables, exchange points, power supplies—all this digital infrastructure is coveted, attracting attacks ranging from sabotage to espionage. Europe, already shaken by several recent incidents, sees this sequence as a concrete warning: sovereignty is now also measured in megawatts and server rooms.
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