UAE, 이란 보복 공격 이후 데이터 센터 '전쟁 강화형' 전환

The UAE is redrawing its plans for a five-gigawatt artificial intelligence data center project, one of the largest anywhere outside the US, after Iranian retaliatory strikes on infrastructure across the Gulf forced the Emirates to rethink how and where critical facilities are built, Reuters reported on 11 September.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, six people familiar with the matter told Reuters that Emirati authorities began reassessing where and how sensitive facilities should be built once the war reached the Gulf.

Four of those sources said the campus, first designed as a single 26-square-kilometer site in Abu Dhabi, is now expected to take shape as several data centers distributed across the country.

Authorities are weighing ways to shield the facilities from drone and missile strikes, including installing air defenses and putting some of the centers underground.

Sources said the redesign incorporates interceptors and electronic jamming equipment, with blast-resistant concrete and additional backup power and cooling systems under consideration, along with possibly housing the most sensitive material, including military data, inside mountains.

Iran began striking Gulf states hosting US forces with missiles and drones in response to US and Israeli airstrikes on Iranian territory. Two Amazon Web Services data centers in the UAE and one in Bahrain were damaged in March, and the company's regional cloud services remain disrupted.

In April, the Iranian armed forces released a video naming Stargate UAE, the $30 billion, one-gigawatt first phase of the campus, as a potential target for retaliatory strikes, showing a map of the site with the caption "Nothing stays hidden from our sight."

Daniel Benaim, a former US deputy assistant secretary of state for Arabian Peninsula affairs, called the war an "economic earthquake" for Gulf states that had spent years selling themselves as safe havens, adding that hardening critical infrastructure was now vitally necessary.

Data centers have moved from commercial facilities into critical infrastructure, processing financial flows, sustaining public services, and feeding into military communications and intelligence work.