Oil$: "UAE Rethinks 5-Gigawatt AI Campus After Iran Targets US Assets in Gulf," by Charles Kennedy.
"The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is considering significant changes to its plans to build a massive 5-GW AI data center in Abu Dhabi in partnership with U.S. tech giants, after Iran started targeting American air bases + U.S.-linked critical infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, multiple sources have told Reuters."
UAE, which aims to become not only a regional but also a global leader in AI development + computing, last year planned to build the 5-GW UAE-US AI [note combination] Campus in Abu Dhabi. "Sprawling campus was planned to include 5 GW of capacity for AI data centers in Abu Dhabi, providing a regional platform from which U.S. hyperscalers would be able to offer latency-friendly services to nearly half the global population living within 3,200 km (2,000 miles) of the UAE."
However, the Iran war + the frequent Iranian missile + drone launches targeting U.S. assets in America’s allies in the Gulf have now prompted the UAE’s authorities to consider spreading the campus into a network of data centers across the UAE, coupled with measures to better protect critical facilities from missile + drone attacks, according to Reuters’ anonymous sources, including a U.S. official, a Western diplomat, + industry executives.
"Earlier this year, Iranian drones damaged 3 Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities in the region, with direct hits on 2 UAE facilities + 1 hit on a facility in Bahrain."
Apparently explosive kinetic attacks are not only treacherous for people + infrastructure, but even corporate strategy may be a casualty of warfare. Already the US has had to close most of its naval + army bases in the Middle East due to its ill-advised attack on Iran.
