Iran’s strategy to counter military might with economic pain has exposed a vulnerability in one of the world’s most vital interests: AI data centers.
Iran has aimed significant firepower at its neighbors’ refineries, oil exports and tourist attractions, inflicting economic havoc on the Gulf states and the countries that do business with them.
Now data centers, which power the technology most crucial to the global economy’s future, are becoming targets. Iran has bombarded several of its neighbors’ data centers, and the United States responded by attacking one of Iran’s.
Data centers have long been cyberattack targets, but physical attacks are unique to 2026. It’s a reckoning for governments that view AI as crucial to their national security and economic growth — and for an industry that has gone all in on building expensive data centers across the planet.
Iran and the United States have attacked at least five data centers in the Gulf region, including a second Iranian missile attack on an Amazon data center in Bahrain late last month. Amazon declined to comment, but its Amazon Web Services dashboard has shown a disruption in the region since an initial April 30 attack on the data center, and satellite imagery showed extensive damage to the AWS facility.
