Data center warfare: Defending the key terrain of AI infrastructure

The rapid expansion of AI-driven data centers is driving permanent changes to the geographical layout of critical infrastructure that serves as the backdrop of global competition and future wars. This includes the construction of digital megacampuses, which will become strategic high value targets, and the proliferation of new data center hubs, which could drive changes to defense planning scenarios, particularly in the Indo-Pacific.

In the wake of the United States’ and Israel’s February attack on Iran’s military and senior leaders, Iran retaliated with missile and drone strikes against U.S. military bases and civilian infrastructure across the Middle East. While much of the world’s attention has focused on the disruption of regional energy production, the attacks also struck three Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, disrupting digital services to banks, payment platforms, and other entities. A month later an Oracle data center in Dubai was damaged in another attack. Iran then declared eighteen major technology companies as legitimate military targets. Included in this list were many of the world’s largest data center owners, including AWS, Microsoft, Meta, Google and Oracle.

For Iran, targeting data centers served multiple strategic ends within a single effort. Hitting those centers allowed it to punish economically vital U.S. companies, as well as the regional organizations that host data on those companies’ servers, and served as an unambiguous threat that further attacks on digital infrastructure were likely if Iran’s demands were not met. But these strikes indicate that a broader strategic shift is already underway.

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