Iran-US tensions: Global AI infrastructure faces mounting concerns
JAKARTA – The escalating conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran since late February 2026 has begun raising fresh concerns within the global technology industry.
The geopolitical tensions are considered capable of threatening artificial intelligence infrastructure, which is now being extensively developed across the Middle East region.
Major technology companies such as Nvidia, Microsoft, Oracle, and OpenAI have been investing substantially to build data centres and computing facilities in Persian Gulf nations. The investments at stake reportedly total trillions of US dollars.
Over the past several years, countries including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar have actively sought to attract American technology companies and global investors to deploy capital in their territories. Local governments have offered various investment incentives, ranging from modern office facilities to funding support from sovereign wealth funds.
Technology companies from Silicon Valley have been among the most active investors. Nvidia, Microsoft, and Oracle have allocated significant funds to establish various technology facilities in the region, including data centres that serve as the backbone of AI development.
However, the situation changed dramatically following the outbreak of armed conflict between Iran and the US-Israel coalition in recent days.
Attacks launched by the US and Israel against Iran at the end of February triggered retaliatory responses from Tehran. In these attacks, Iran not only targeted military facilities but also a number of civilian targets in Persian Gulf nations.
One direct consequence was drone attacks on technology infrastructure. Two Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres in the United Arab Emirates were reportedly struck by Iranian drones on Sunday (1 March 2026).
AWS stated that one Availability Zone in the ME-CENTRAL-1 region, specifically mec1-az2, was forced to cease operations as a result of the incident. This disruption caused several customers to experience problems with cloud computing services, particularly affecting Amazon EC2 network APIs. Additionally, another technology facility in Bahrain was reported to have suffered damage from a similar attack.
The deteriorating security situation has also prompted the US government to close several of its major embassies across the Middle East, including those in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.