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Iran's attacks on Amazon data centers in UAE, Bahrain signal a new kind of war
- prepend 7mo agoIsn’t this just Iran trying to hit anything “of value” and it really a strategic target? I doubt they are thinking things through vs just firing off semi randomly.
- perfmode 7mo agoWhen resources are finite and require precise guidance, why would they fire semi randomly when they can be strategic?
- whackernews 7mo agoA new kind of war where people won’t be able to get next day delivery on the 5m USB-C cable that they ordered.
- samrus 7mo agoBro thinks amazon is the onky thing that uses AWS
- fastball 7mo agoThat is... not what AWS data centers are primarily used for in 2026.
- whackernews 7mo agoYou mean they’re not used to sell me cheap Chinese USB-C cables?
- esseph 7mo agoAWS is also running government, military, medical, university etc systems. Banking.
- allanmacgregor 7mo agoYou confused AWS with Amazon distribution and warehouses, and you are doubling down ? Likely or not, much of the world's infrastructure runs on or through AWS data centers. Attacks like this can cause significant disruption.
- whackernews 7mo ago[dead]
- andrew_gs 7mo agoOr can't withdraw money from their FAB bank accounts as it's dependent on AWS infra. This is pretty much entirely to do with AWS and not the retail website.
- dragonwriter 7mo agoYes, Amazon Retail being the sole significant customer of AWS, I guess?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- paxys 7mo ago> The tech industry often talks about “the cloud” as though it were something abstract and untouchable. But the cloud runs on data centers, those data centers have an address, and that address can be hit by a drone. Nominating this as the best opening line I have read in a while.
- aaron695 7mo ago[dead]
- paxys 7mo agoStriking public infrastructure is the oldest kind of war there is. The article does raise an important question though - would an AWS data center be considered a civilian target or military?
- proshno 7mo ago[dead]
- trhway 7mo agoBuying an antidrone and even antimissile system like say Pantsir-S1, Skyranger 30 or similar is just few million dollars - peanuts compare to the cost of the datacenter to be protected. Once AMAZN starts doing it for themselves, they will possibly also start air-defense-as-a-service using spare capacity. With all the money and assets and the whole value of business, the Big Tech has already started to move into energy, and i think the defense, starting with self-defense, will be among the nearest-future next domains they will move into.
- mc3301 7mo agoIf everyone has an antidrone/antimissile system, then everyone will finally be safe.
- trhway 7mo agothe previous world order based on sovereign states is quickly coming to end. Emerging world order is based on force, and the large corps have more money than many states. The only thing they are missing is the rights of a sovereign entity. Well in a world order driven by force, the rights you have is the rights that you've obtained by force. I think we'll soon see, by analogy with corporate personhood, some version of corporate statehood.
- OneMorePerson 7mo agoI don't think it happens quite that distinctly in the world we live in now (technology, etc.). It's not like a big tech company can go attain the same direct power as the East India company way back in the day. It's much more likely that companies continue to gain lobbying and "soft" power that directs the military into doing things. Large corps do have more money than many countries, so if a huge company wants to setup manufacturing or gain benefits in a smaller country they do have outsized power, but its rare that a huge company has more power than their own country from what I know (potentially oil companies are the exception which is why national oil companies seem to have so much weight in so many countries). For example sure the big tech companies are very powerful, but the US military budget per year is still nearly the same size as the largest tech companies market cap. Whereas you are right that a US big tech company has more revenue than say...Guatemala, or Morocco.
- YVoyiatzis 7mo agoWTF are Amazon’s data centers doung in the UAE? Excuse my ignorance, but why there?
- samrus 7mo agoLatency
- unsnap_biceps 7mo agoI would image data sovereignty is also a big factor.
- achille 7mo ago- local data residency & sovereignty - latency - bandwidth - regulatory climate - competition uae is business friendly all cloud providers have middle east presence refineries generate terabytes of sensor data per hour the population and people there produce and consume a lot of data
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