Iran Strikes Amazon Web Services: Data Centres Are New ‘Oil Fields’? The Modern Warfare Explained

Last Updated:March 04, 2026, 11:40 IST

2 Amazon Web Services centres in UAE, 1 in Bahrain struck: Data centres' computing power and one facility can cripple thousands of organisations, from banks to govt agencies

Iranian drone and missile strikes have targeted Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. These attacks highlight a shift in modern warfare where data centres have become as strategically vital as oil refineries.

What does it mean? Explained

The AWS strikes

Two AWS data centres in the United Arab Emirates were “directly struck" by drones, causing structural damage and fires. A third facility in Bahrain was damaged by a drone strike in close proximity.

The strikes led to power outages, structural damage, and the activation of fire suppression systems, which caused further water damage to server racks.

Major services including Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and DynamoDB experienced significant error rates and outages across the region.

The company’s cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services, said late Monday that two data centres in the United Arab Emirates were “directly struck" and another facility in Bahrain was also damaged after a drone landed nearby. “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," AWS said in an update on its online dashboard.

What are data centres? What do the attacks mean?

An Amazon data centre, part of Amazon Web Services or AWS, is a massive physical facility that houses thousands of computer servers, storage systems, and networking hardware. These centres serve as the “engine" for much of the modern internet, powering everything from AI models and streaming services to government systems.

Many are hyperscale data centres, covering millions of square feet and housing 5,000 to 50,000+ servers each. As of early 2026, AWS operates more than 900 facilities globally across 50+ countries.

Each AWS region is split up into at least three data centre availability zones, with each zone isolated and physically separated “by a meaningful distance," although they are all within 100 km of each other and connected by “ultra-low-latency networks" that reduce the time lag for data transmission.

AWS says its data centres have redundant water, power, telecom, and internet connections “so we can maintain continuous operations in an emergency." They also have physical security, but those measures, including security guards, fences, video surveillance and alarm systems, are designed to keep out intruders rather than defend against missile attacks.

Mike Chapple, an IT professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business said the attacks are a reminder that cloud computing isn’t “magical" and “still requires physical facilities on the ground, which are vulnerable to all sorts of disaster scenarios." Data centres run by AWS and other operators are massive facilities that are hard to hide, he added.

“Organisations using services from any cloud provider in the Middle East should immediately take steps to shift their computing to other regions," Chapple said.

Damage to three Amazon Web Services facilities in the Middle East from Iranian drone strikes highlights the rapid growth of data centres in the region, as well as the industry’s vulnerability to conflict.

Unlike previous AWS disruptions involving software that resulted in widespread global outages, these attacks involving physical damage appear to have resulted only in localised and limited disruption.

Why data centres have become strategic war targets?

According to experts, data centres are now “the new oil fields" of warfare for several critical reasons:

Concentrated Impact: Data centres house enormous computing power in centralised locations. Disabling one facility can simultaneously cripple thousands of organisations, from banks to government agencies, according to an India Today assessment.

Military & Intelligence Hubs: Modern militaries and governments rely heavily on cloud infrastructure for logistics, communication, and intelligence gathering, according to news reports.

Economic Instability: Cloud services support digital payments, e-commerce, and financial markets. Disrupting these services can quickly lead to widespread economic chaos and investor uncertainty.

Revenge Against AI Warfare: Reports indicate the U.S. military used AI tools (including Anthropic’s Claude) to plan strikes against Iran. Targeting AWS may be a retaliatory move against the digital infrastructure that enables such technology.

Physical Vulnerability: Despite advanced cybersecurity, data centres remain massive physical targets that are difficult to hide and defend against sustained missile or drone waves.

What next?

Amazon Web Services hosts many of the world’s most-used online services, providing behind-the-scenes cloud computing infrastructure to many government departments, universities and businesses. The company advised customers using servers in the Middle East to migrate to other regions, and direct online traffic away from the UAE and Bahrain.

“Amazon has generally configured its services so that the loss of a single data centre would be relatively unimportant to its operations," said Mike Chapple, an IT professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.

Other data centres in the same zone can take over, and most of the time this happens seamlessly every day to balance workloads, he said. “That said, the loss of multiple data centres within an availability zone could cause serious issues, as things could reach a point where there simply isn’t enough remaining capacity to handle all the work." Amazon doesn’t typically disclose the exact number of data centres it operates around the world.

It says only that its data centres are clustered in 39 geographic regions, with three such regions in the Middle East, covering the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel.

AWS advised customers in the Middle East to back up data and migrate workloads to unaffected regions. AWS reported that UAE facilities were making progress toward full restoration, though the volatile security environment remains unpredictable.

Amazon shares fell by approximately 2.7% in premarket trading following the news of the strikes.

With PTI, Agency Inputs

News explainers Iran Strikes Amazon Web Services: Data Centres Are New ‘Oil Fields’? The Modern Warfare Explained

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