Emerging risks in the digital infrastructure push

Saudi Arabia and the GCC are building ambitious AI infrastructure. Gigawatt-scale data centers, sovereign cloud platforms and national AI strategies are reshaping the region’s economic identity. Yet the data powering this ambition — every transaction, model query and connected service — still moves through physical systems that have largely sat outside geopolitical risk planning. In the wake of US-Israel strikes on Iran, retaliatory drone and missile attacks damaged multiple AWS data centers in the UAE and Bahrain.