AI data centers have become sitting ducks in the Iran war

CNN Business

Aug 03

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 ...

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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.That has aligned the region with the United States — and exposed their AI assets to Iranian attacks, noted Helima Croft, he","collect":0,"end_time":0,"defaultTopTitle":"cnn.com","property":[],"viewcount":null,"language":"en","relate_stocks":{"AMZP":"KURV YIELD PREMIUM STRATEGY AMAZON (AMZN) ETF","LU1084165304.USD":"FIDELITY WORLD \"A\" (USD) ACC","LU0672654240.SGD":"FTIF - Franklin US Opportunities A Acc SGD-H1","PXQ":"Invesco Dynamic Networking ETF","ARTY":"ISHARES FUTURE AI & TECH ETF","LU2065171311.SGD":"M&G (LUX) GLOBAL MAXIMA \"A\" (SGD) ACC","EPAI":"Harbor AI Inflection Strategy ETF","WDAI":"Pacer S&P World 3AI Top 300 ETF","LU0265550946.USD":"BGF SYSTEMATIC GLOBAL ENHANCED EQUITY YIELD \"A5\" (USD) INC","AMZD":"1倍做空AMZN ETF-Direxion","IE0034235303.USD":"PINEBRIDGE US RESEARCH ENHANCED CORE EQUITY \"A\" (USD) ACC","CLOU":"Global X Cloud Computing ETF","LU2237957811.SGD":"NIKKO AM GLOBAL EQUITY \"F\" (SGD) ACC","CHAT":"ROUNDHILL GENERATIVE AI & TECHNOLOGY ETF","AIPO":"Defiance AI and Power Infrastructure ETF","HULL":"Corgi Shipping & Global Logistics ETF","LU0056508442.USD":"贝莱德世界科技基金A2","AMZN":"亚马逊","LU0208291251.USD":"FRANKLIN MUTUAL U.S. VALUE \"A\" (USD) INC","VTHR":"Vanguard Russell 3000 ETF","BERZ":"MicroSectors FANG & Innovation -3X Inverse Leveraged ETN","TEK":"iShares Technology Opportunities Active ETF","LU0689472784.USD":"安联收益及增长基金Cl AM AT Acc","AZYY":"GraniteShares YieldBOOST AMZN ETF","USAW.SI":"AMZN 3xLongSG261006","WANT":"Direxion Daily Consumer Discretionary Bull 3x Shares","AIBU":"Direxion Daily AI and Big Data Bull 2X Shares","SG9999018857.SGD":"United Global Quality Growth Fd Cl Acc SGD-H","CLIX":"ProShares Long Online/Short Stores ETF","AMZZ":"2倍做多AMZN ETF-GraniteShares","ONLN":"ProShares Online Retail ETF","QTOC":"Innovator Growth Accelerated Plus ETF - October","RTH":"零售指数ETF-HOLDRs","LU2092937148.SGD":"Blackrock ESG Multi-Asset A8 SGD-H","AMZY":"AMZN期权收益策略ETF-YieldMax","LU0820562030.AUD":"ALLIANZ INCOME AND GROWTH \"AMH2\" (AUDHDG) H2 INC","IREC":"Corgi IREN 2x Daily ETF","IE00BYQQ9H92.USD":"BNY MELLON GLOBAL LEADERS \"A\" (USD) ACC","LU0354030511.USD":"ALLSPRING  U.S. LARGE CAP GROWTH \"I\" (USD) ACC","AMZW":"Roundhill AMZN WeeklyPay™ ETF","AIHY":"Defiance AI Hyperscale Leaders ETF","OGIG":"ALPS O'Shares Global Internet Giants ETF","LU0251142724.SGD":"Fidelity America A-SGD","TCAI":"Tortoise AI Infrastructure ETF","AMZU":"2倍做多AMZN ETF-Direxion","FWD":"AB DISRUPTORS ETF","LU1066051225.USD":"HSBC GIF GLOBAL EQUITY VOLATILITY FOCUSED \"AC\" (USD) ACC","LU0784383803.USD":"BGF GLOBAL MULTI-ASSET INCOME FUND \"A\" (USD) INC A","AGIX":"通用人工智能 ETF-AGIX","ILDR":"First Trust Innovation Leaders ETF"},"translate_title":"人工智能数据中心已成为伊朗战争中的坐鸭子","themeId":null,"isJumpTheme":false,"ttsUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d2c4e2939850713eecb025a52f5fc8f7","symbols_score_info":{"RTH":0.6,"ARTY":1.5,"AMZN":0.75,"EPAI":1.5,"AZYY":0.6,"TCAI":1.5,"AMZU":0.6,"USAW.SI":0.6,"WDAI":1.5,"AMZY":1.5,"AMZD":0.6,"AIHY":1.5,"CHAT":1.5,"VTHR":1.5,"IREC":1.5,"AGIX":1.5,"OGIG":0.6,"WANT":0.6,"AMZZ":0.6,"HULL":0.6,"ILDR":0.6,"AMZP":0.6,"FWD":1.5,"AIBU":1.5,"AIPO":1.5,"BERZ":1.5,"CLOU":1.5,"ONLN":0.6,"AMZW":0.6,"QTOC":1.5,"PXQ":1.5,"CLIX":0.6,"TEK":1.5},"content_text":"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.\n    \n\n            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.\n    \n\n            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.\n    \n\n            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.\n    \n\n        A new front in the war\n\n\n            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.\n    \n\n            In the war’s early days, Iran made clear that it views data centers as justified military targets. The IRGC published a list of 29 regional tech targets it planned to strike, including sites owned by Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and Palantir.\n    \n\n            In a Telegram post following its July 21 attack on the Amazon data center, the Iranian regime said it struck the facility again because Amazon is a cloud provider for US military intelligence efforts. Amazon holds numerous US government contracts, including part of the $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability project. Google, Microsoft and Oracle are also part of the project.\n    \n\n            The region’s data centers are important not only to the US military and AI industries but also to the Gulf region, which fancied itself a third global AI hub, along with the United States and China. Saudi Arabia has dedicated a significant portion of its $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund to AI, and the UAE signed a landmark deal with the Trump administration last year to build Stargate, a $500 billion AI data center – the largest such project outside the United States. OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia and Cisco all partnered on that project.\n    \n\n            Combined, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have pledged more than $2 trillion in AI-related investments with the United States — on condition that they also divest from Chinese equivalent technology.\n    \n\n            That has aligned the region with the United States — and exposed their AI assets to Iranian attacks, noted Helima Croft, head of global strategy at RBC Capital Markets.\n    \n\n            “On their face, these attacks and broader threats work to undermine confidence in what stands to be an important region for AI innovation and investment,” said Croft. “They also highlight the role that these companies play in warfare and diplomacy, as well as what lengths the US is willing to go to defend them.”\n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA man walks next to a symbolic mockup of an Iranian missile and an Iranian flag at Imam Hussein Square in Tehran, Iran, on July 12, 2026.\n\nMajid Asgaripour/Wana News Agency/Reuters\n\n\n\n\n\n        An old problem with a new twist\n\n\n            Data centers may seem new because of the recent rapid expansion in buildouts during the AI revolution. But data centers have been around for decades — and they’ve been targets of war for a long time.\n    \n\n            Militaries often run command and control operations away from the frontlines; enemies have sought to disrupt those communications through jamming and, in the past few decades, cyberattacks.\n    \n\n            But data centers blowing up? That’s new.\n    \n\n            The reason is twofold: AI has become economically critical to the United States and the Gulf region, so Iran can inflict damage where it really counts by disrupting data centers at a low cost – primarily with drones. And Iran can legitimately claim data centers are military targets.\n    \n\n            “They don’t carry a sticker that says, ‘Military data here!’” said Andrew Reddie, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “Data centers could be storing military-relevant data and be used for market-oriented purposes at the same time.”\n    \n\n            “If you’re Iran and you’re looking at Amazon, it might as well have an American flag painted all over it,” he added.\n    \n\n        What now?\n\n\n            All that has significant implications for the companies that build data centers and the governments that want them to be built.\n    \n\n            But they’re effectively just giant warehouses with really expensive equipment inside, noted Philip Wray, head of property at insurer MSIG. There’s not a whole lot that can be done to harden them against bombs and drones.\n    \n\n            That’s why the systems are built with redundancy — typically to protect against natural disasters, cut cables and the like, but now for attacks, as well. When one data center goes down, the data that was stored there and the compute power that it provided can usually be accessed from a different data center.\n    \n\n            Despite the war, Gulf states remain loaded with cash and committed to AI. Even with all the money to be made there, foreign companies may think twice about building in the region if they fear their assets can’t be adequately protected, Reddie noted.\n    \n\n            And data center insurance costs are ballooning — if you can get it at all.\n    \n\n            “Some clients are looking at recent events and they’re thinking twice about whether they move forward, and some insurers aren’t comfortable taking on certain risks,” said Joe Macejak, US property digital infrastructure leader at insurance brokerage Marsh.\n    \n\n            Even if they can get coverage, tech companies won’t be able to transfer all the risk to an insurance carrier, noted Macejak.\n    \n\n            With chips, building supplies, labor and other associated costs skyrocketing as data center demand surges, that’s a lot of risk for a company to take on.\n    \n\n            Especially if that data center has a giant target on its roof.","kind":"highlight","is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":false,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":false,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"0","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"isVideo":false,"video":null,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":0,"need_auth":false,"need_login_tip":false,"code":"91000000","status":"200"}}}