Iran has already attacked data centers in the Gulf, striking Amazon Web Services facilities in the UAE and Bahrain and causing outages for banking, payments, enterprise, and consumer services in the region. The move threatens to upend tech companies’ investments, as well as AI expansion in the Middle East.
OpenAI is building a 10-square-mile AI campus in the UAE called Stargate, which has involvement from Oracle, Nvidia, and Cisco. Microsoft is reportedly planning to invest $15 billion in the UAE in the next three years. But if Iran steps up its attacks on these companies’ Middle Eastern assets, all of this will be in limbo.
Many of these companies have also curried favor with the Trump administration, or have extensive U.S. government contracts. Oracle’s chairman and founder, Larry Ellison, as well as Palantir founder Peter Thiel, are both strong supporters of President Trump and may not be happy if their investments are literally blown up. Did anyone in the White House foresee the possibility of attacks on tech infrastructure? It appears not, providing more proof that there was little, if any, planning for this reckless war.
