As the tech industry chases growth in the Middle East through data centers, the companies' infrastructure is increasingly exposed to conflicts in the region.

U.S. tech companies are investing billions of dollars into data centers in the Middle East as companies chase artificial intelligence ambitions and growing need for computing power.

At least three Amazon data centers have been damaged by Iranian drone strikes since the U.S. attacked Iran on Friday, disrupting the company's cloud computing services in the region. Whether the attacks will shape Amazon's expansion plans in the region remains an open question.

In an Amazon Web Services network health update Monday, the company said two facilities in the United Arab Emirates were directly struck and another data center in Bahrain was damaged from a nearby drone strike. As of Tuesday, the company was still working on recovery efforts but the overall state of services in the region remained largely unchanged. Amazon has not provided an update since.

Amazon said the strikes caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that have resulted in additional water damage." The company said it's working closely with local authorities and prioritizing the safety of its employees.

AWS underpins a huge portion of the internet as companies rely on Amazon's cloud computing platform to operate their own websites and internal systems.

The company divides its cloud computing coverage by region, with three sites in each region known as availability zones. In the UAE region, two of the availability zones were significantly impaired, according to Amazon. The third zone in the region is operating normally, but experienced strain from higher traffic. In the Bahrain region, one zone was affected.

Amazon said organizations that rely on AWS in both regions were experiencing elevated error rates and degraded services.

The disrupted AWS regions highlight tech's growth and increased vulnerability in the Middle East, where Amazon currently has three geographic regions spread between Bahrain, the UAE and Israel. All of them have been launched since 2019. Amazon also has a planned AWS region in Saudi Arabia.

Other tech companies like Microsoft also have cloud regions in the Middle East. Microsoft lists its Azure cloud regions as Qatar, the UAE and Israel, as well as plans for one for Kuwait.

Tech companies deal with outages and service disruptions often. In January, a Microsoft outage affected thousands of users' email accounts. Another Microsoft Azure cloud computing outage in October hit websites for companies like Costco, Starbucks and Alaska Airlines. And a massive disruption on Amazon's cloud computing networks affected much of the internet for about 15 hours in October.

But companies like Amazon rarely contend with their facilities being affected by drone strikes and other results of military conflict. Those disruptions may be localized, but they can still affect the entire company.

Amazon's share price dropped sharply Monday morning, when the market opened and digested the news that the company's facilities in the Middle East had been affected. It has since recovered.

Amazon's planned data center hub in Saudi Arabia is a $5.3 billion investment to build an "AI zone" in the country. The company had said it expected to launch that project this year.

Amazon and Microsoft have both faced criticism over their cloud contracts and investments in the Middle East. Pro-Palestinian activists have called for both companies to cut ties with the Israeli government, and digital civil rights nonprofit Access Now called for Amazon to halt its expansion of cloud services in Saudi Arabia over human rights concerns.

Microsoft has committed to spending $15.2 billion in the UAE between 2023 and 2029. In the first three years of that commitment, Microsoft said it has spent more than $7.3 billion so far, $4.6 billion of which was used on AI and cloud data centers in the country.

"This is not money raised in the UAE," Microsoft said in a November blog post. "It's money we're spending in the UAE.

©2026 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.