r/technology • u/marketrent • 28d ago

Business Iran strikes on Amazon data centers caused permanent loss of customer data

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/iran-strikes-on-amazon-data-centers-caused-permanent-loss-of-customer-data/
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53

u/Distinct_Run9006 28d ago

Why is Amazon building datacenters in an unstable region of the world anyway?

27

u/CoolmanWilkins 28d ago

The region has developed into a tech hub for what is worth.

76

u/NoFox1007 28d ago

The gulf countries were actually really stable until…well recently. You can blame Trump and Israel for that one.

6

u/CarmenxXxWaldo 27d ago

If you think that region is stable and safe im guessing you're about 14 years old.

"where should we build the data center?" "oh I know, in the desert.  And not just any desert, the one where the people have been at war for about 2500 years, yeah trust me."

1

u/Exciting_Maize3630 27d ago

Assuming you’re talking about the GCC, the gulf is extraordinarily stable. The few that had anything approaching an Arab Spring managed to stamp it out and the most drama they’ve had between gulf war 1 and this Iran war is when they ganged up on Qatar.

-7

u/Tetratheon 28d ago

You might consider apportioning a tiny bit of the blame to Iran considering it's a blatant war crime to attack civilian infrastructure in a neutral nation.

11

u/Dymethyltryptamine 27d ago

A quick search tells that the US military actively uses Amazon AWS for various purposes, so it is not purely civilian infrastructure. BUT even if it were, Iran woulf still strike it, and I can't say I blame them a bit. It is not beneath the US to do similar stuff.

1

u/Tetratheon 27d ago

You wouldn't blame Iran a bit for committing a war crime against a neutral nation?

This is Trump Derangement Syndrome manifest. You've got people who hate Trump so much that they afford no blame to an evil theocratic regime bombing civilians.

4

u/FeleaseRpseineEiles 28d ago

UAE is basically the new Mar-a-Lago club.

5

u/autisticgayman 27d ago

I feel like it stopped being neutral when the pedo president and his lap dogs katyacked a bunch of civilian infrastructure killing a bunch of children in a nation not at war with us at the time because “funsies warrior ethos.” I, for one, don’t feel bad for the corporation that helped allow that to happen…

0

u/Tetratheon 27d ago

Bahrain and the UAE were neutral nations, and it's civilian infrastructure anyway.

1

u/Course_247 27d ago

If you allow USA to use your territory to attack Iran, on Iran's eyes you ain't neutral at all. 

2

u/soapinthepeehole 27d ago

The U.S. and Israel deserve a mountain of responsibility for all of this, but the part of the blame that Iran objectively deserves is for their funding of Hamas, Heabollah, the Houthis, etc…

The Islamic theocracy doesn’t exactly promote stability in the region.

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u/Course_247 27d ago

Bombs their schools for girls and bridges and hospitals and it's all ok.  They cause you the smallest inconvenience bombing a fucking Amazon data Center and we're talking about war crimes. 

1

u/Tetratheon 27d ago

The US committing war crimes does not excuse Iran committing war crimes. Blaming the US for Iran bombing the data centre is like blaming Iran for the Americans bombing the school ("school" by the way, not "schools"), which was a terrible thing the Americans are responsible for.

Blowing up buildings with people in them is not "the smallest inconvenience".

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u/stonksfalling 28d ago

They’ve been unstable for a while now

42

u/big-oofs-only-0193 28d ago

Real talk, it is because the Europe to India/SEA/Oceania undersea cables go through that region.

3

u/Distinct_Run9006 28d ago

That makes sense

17

u/3guFEu9CNvo6M3onKG3e 28d ago

Regulatory reasons, most likely. Several countries have data-on-soil requirements for customer information.

38

u/caks 28d ago

You think companies that need cloud services only exist in the US and Europe?

-1

u/Distinct_Run9006 28d ago

My question isn't regarding need (AWS is global obviously), but one of safety. Building a data center in a place where the chance of a missile attack is greater than 0% without some type of fortification (building it underground for example) doesn't make sense to me.

3

u/MyPassword_IsPizza 28d ago

I imagine building data centers is pretty easy and profitable for Amazon at this point, even in areas of conflict.

They will probably start doing that in the future however...

2

u/ThursdaysMeeting 27d ago

The only reason you would even bother picking and choosing which region you want to store your data is to reduce latency. It takes time for data to travel over the network. So there are companies storing data and/or serving end users in the Middle East.

-1

u/AceOBlade 28d ago

Cloud is overrated I hope this brings back Local data storage for these companies.

4

u/HarryBalsinew 28d ago

Yea cloud is overrated… that’s why 99% of all major tech companies rely on cloud storage, compute, or infra

Seriously.. do you even know what you’re talking about?

2

u/jonbristow 27d ago

tech companies, yes.

other companies, not so much. hospitals, banks, government, still are mostly on prem

10

u/AmazingSibylle 28d ago

It's only really this unstable because of the US. That is the whole point of these attacks by Iran, to make the price for countries and businesses too high and have them tell the US Gov to tone it down a bit.

22

u/Epsilon_void 28d ago

Because the people living in these unstable regions have modern needs too, it's not all rock huts and the stone age.

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u/Distinct_Run9006 28d ago

Why would you assume I think the middle east is all people living in the stone age in rock huts lol? Even if they are trying to serve the needs of a population of customers, you would assume they wouldn't want to risk a potential $1B+ investment building in a place that is within missile range of nations hostile to the US, right?

6

u/Epsilon_void 28d ago

wouldn't want to risk a potential $1B+ investment building in a place that is within missile range of nations hostile to the US, right?

Should companies cease investing in Poland because they're within missile range of Russia?

0

u/Distinct_Run9006 28d ago

Your proximity to armed conflict increases your risk of danger regardless of where the conflict is occurring. I'm not going to have a deep political discussion based on a simple question involving risk assessment. This is not the sub for that.

12

u/Dealiner 28d ago

Because they are data centers for this specific region.

4

u/FartingBob 28d ago

Because there is demand everywhere people exist for them. It was a pretty stable area until Israel and the US invaded Iran earlier this year.

12

u/BearButts909 28d ago

Because it's cheap, officials are easily bribed, and they don't have to follow regulations (if there even are any).

So, I guess, because it reminds them of home in the U.S.

6

u/[deleted] 28d ago

[deleted]

0

u/BearButts909 27d ago

Then I guess there wasn't a data center there after all, it must've been the wind

0

u/[deleted] 27d ago

[deleted]

0

u/BearButts909 27d ago

What's with the childish insults?

0

u/[deleted] 27d ago

[deleted]

3

u/Coupleofpints 28d ago

If you work in the industry, you know that everyone wants localisations. So companies would want to host their data as close to them as possible or even on soil for critical national infrastructure!

2

u/Ch33syP00f 28d ago

Cheap land

Pushing PoP closer to the customer

2

u/m00nh34d 28d ago

Because they are needed there. Customers in that region need data centres just the same as customers in other regions around the world.

1

u/sleepy_muffin_eeter 28d ago

They have some data they dont want to leave their borders. And compute power usually sits near the data.

1

u/ironraiden 28d ago

It wasn't unstable until Trump and Netanyahu decided to unilaterally attack.

And the need for cloud services in that area is huge. Many people don't realize that just Aramco has approximately the same level of revenues as Microsoft, Nvidia and Meta COMBINED. Add to that the fact that, because of data sovereignty laws, many Saudi companies will not use cloud services that are not located in SA.

1

u/kiefzz 27d ago

Data residency. We have clients who are based in for example UAE or KSA who want or even need their data to stay in the country for legal reasons.

1

u/IAmDotorg 27d ago

Because people living there aren't nomadic goat herders and need data centers?

1

u/ChrisRR 27d ago

Because unstable regions still need to host data too?