Amazon's Cloud Unit In Bahrain "Disrupted" By Iranian Strike

Just one day after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened U.S. companies across the Middle East, the Financial Times reported late Tuesday morning that an IRGC strike had damaged Amazon's cloud computing infrastructure in Bahrain. 

The FT cited Bahrain's interior ministry, which said civil defense teams were "extinguishing a fire in a facility of a company as a result of the Iranian aggression."

Local authorities did not identify the company, disclose the type of air-delivered munition used, and/or provide further operational details about the strike.

But according to a person familiar with the incident cited by the FT reporters, the damaged site was part of Amazon's cloud computing operation, a reminder that civilian infrastructure, such as data centers and other digital infrastructure, is increasingly exposed to cheap one-way attack unmanned aerial systems. 

Amazon's Service Health page on its website shows that AWS is "Disrupted" in the Bahrain operating area. 

The IRGC strike on the Amazon facility in Bahrain comes one day after Sepah News, the IRGC's official news outlet, named 18 U.S. companies with operations in the Middle East that are now considered "legitimate targets."

"From now on, for every assassination, an American company will be destroyed," an IRGC-affiliated news outlet said.

The list of companies also included Cisco, HP, Intel, Oracle, IBM, Dell, Palantir, JPMorgan, Tesla, GE, Spire Solutions, Boeing, and UAE-based artificial intelligence company G42.

Let's not forget that IRGC forces struck AWS data centers in the Middle East in early March, causing outages in a number of apps and digital services across the United Arab Emirates.

The U.S.-Iran conflict has taught the world that civilian infrastructure, more importantly, data centers, has become a target, and as we warned even before the conflict erupted, there will be a push for counter-UAS technology at these facilities, as well as other high-value assets. Just this week, we learned that the U.S. military is preparing to deploy laser weapons against drones in Washington, D.C.