On March 11, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) publicly listed American technology companies – Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, IBM, Oracle, and Palantir – as legitimate targets, alongside the locations of their regional offices, and facilities. The declaration, disseminated via Telegram by the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency, came as the conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran entered its twelfth day and followed direct Iranian strikes on Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the Gulf.
The IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters framed the announcement with a stark warning: “As the scope of the regional war expands to infrastructure war, the scope of Iran’s legitimate targets expands.” This threat was not isolated. Ten days prior, Iranian drone strikes had directly impacted two AWS data centers in the United Arab Emirates, with a third in Bahrain sustaining damage from a nearby explosion. AWS confirmed structural damage, disrupted power, and fire suppression systems causing water damage. Two of the three availability zones in the UAE region were taken offline, causing significant service disruptions for Emirates NBD, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Hubpay, and Careem. Iran stated these facilities were targeted due to their hosting of United States military workloads, marking what the Uptime Institute described as the first confirmed kinetic strike on a hyperscale cloud provider.
The March 11 targeting list was highly specific: Google’s Dubai office and Qatar cloud center; Nvidia’s largest research and development facility in Haifa; IBM’s AI research center in Be’er Sheva; Palantir’s Abu Dhabi collaboration hub and Tel Aviv office; Oracle’s Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi offices; and additional Amazon facilities in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Iran justified these targets by asserting that these companies provide technology with direct military applications to the United States and Israeli armed forces – a claim substantiated, in several instances, by existing contracts. All six companies named maintain contracts with the Pentagon, and NVIDIA, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and Palantir all have documented ties to Israeli government and military programs.
Concurrent with the targeting of digital infrastructure, Iran has escalated attacks on physical economic infrastructure. On March 11, Iranian drones struck near Dubai International Airport, wounding four individuals. While the airport remained operational, the incident triggered significant insurance, diplomatic, and logistical repercussions. Iran has also effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for global oil supply, through which approximately one-fifth of the world’s daily oil passes. At least fourteen vessels have been struck since the beginning of the conflict, resulting in seven fatalities. The Thai cargo ship, the Mayuree Naree, was set ablaze in the strait, with three crew members remaining missing after twenty were rescued by the Omani navy. The United States has destroyed sixteen Iranian minelayers near the Strait, but Brent crude oil prices have risen 20% since February 28, impacting fuel prices and financial markets globally.
The cyber domain has also become a central battleground. Israel launched what analysts have characterized as the largest cyberattack in history against Iran on February 28, reducing Iranian internet connectivity to between 1% and 4% of normal levels. Tasnim News Agency was briefly hacked to display anti-government messages. Iran retaliated with cyber operations targeting Gulf states, Jordan, Cyprus, and the United States, logging over 600 attack claims within days. The GPS and automatic identification systems of more than 1,100 vessels were disrupted through coordinated electronic warfare. A cyberattack targeted Israeli railways, broadcasting evacuation warnings inside stations. The lines between kinetic, electronic, and cyber warfare have blurred.
This shift in warfare has exposed deficiencies in existing international law. The Geneva Conventions, last substantially updated in 1977, were formulated for conflicts involving traditional armies and physical battlefields. They offer limited guidance on dual-use digital infrastructure, the role of artificial intelligence in lethal decision-making, or accountability for autonomous strikes. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has repeatedly urged the development of fresh legal instruments. A UN Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons has been deliberating since 2014, yet no binding treaty or enforcement mechanism has emerged.
The legal ambiguity has direct financial consequences. Standard insurance policies typically do not cover losses incurred through military action, meaning the costs associated with the AWS strikes – and any future attacks on Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and Palantir facilities – will be borne entirely by the companies themselves. The Gulf states have attracted substantial Western technology investment predicated on regional stability. OpenAI’s ten-square-mile Stargate AI campus in the UAE, backed by Oracle, Nvidia, and Cisco, now operates in a region where Iran has demonstrated the capacity and willingness to strike commercial technology infrastructure. Microsoft’s reported fifteen-billion-dollar investment in the UAE also faces increased uncertainty.
A further concern, largely absent from international debate, is the potential for epistemic failure inherent in AI-assisted targeting. Systems trained on historical conflict data may encode biases regarding combatant identification. Deployed at machine speed in densely populated areas, misidentification is not an anomaly but a systemic risk. The United States military is currently investigating an incident where a Tomahawk missile mistakenly struck an Iranian girls’ school. The principle of distinction – differentiating between combatants and civilians – was designed for a human-paced battlefield. Algorithmic warfare does not allow for deliberation.
The events of the past twelve days have underscored that the global technology ecosystem – encompassing cloud infrastructure, AI systems, semiconductor research, maritime communications, and financial networks – has become a primary theater of armed conflict, functioning simultaneously as both a weapon and a target. On March 11, the UN Security Council voted 13-0 to demand Iran halt its attacks on Gulf neighbors. This resolution addresses kinetic strikes but remains silent on the infrastructure war Iran has explicitly declared, as well as the legal framework governing AI-assisted targeting and attacks on dual-use digital infrastructure.
