How Data Centers Became a Casualty of War
Three facilities have suffered damage in drone strikes, and analysts say such installations are increasingly at risk.
Smoke rising from the site of an Iranian strike in Dubai on March 1.
Photographer: Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty Images
For millennia, wartime combatants have sought to hobble the infrastructure of their adversaries by poisoning wells, burning bridges or, more recently, attacking railways, refineries and airports. In the war now unfolding across the Middle East, another kind of target has been added to the list: data centers.
Drone strikes have damaged three facilities operated by Amazon.com Inc. in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. And Israel and the US have hit at least two data centers in Tehran—one of them connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—according to Holistic Resilience, a nonprofit mapping airstrikes. Attacking such facilities can “paralyze banks, paralyze government offices” and key industries, says Daniel Efrati, chief executive officer of NED Data Centers, an Israeli company that builds fortified data centers. “If you have one minute of downtime, it can cost any organization millions.”