The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is considering significant changes to its plans to build a massive 5-gigawatt AI data center in Abu Dhabi in partnership with U.S. tech giants, after Iran started targeting American air bases and U.S.-linked critical infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, multiple sources have told Reuters.
The UAE, which aims to become not only a regional but also a global leader in AI development and computing, last year planned to build the 5-GW UAE-US AI Campus in Abu Dhabi.
The sprawling campus was planned to include 5 GW of capacity for AI data centers in Abu Dhabi, providing a regional platform from which U.S. hyperscalers would be able to offer latency-friendly services to nearly half of the global population living within 3,200 km (2,000 miles) of the UAE.
However, the Iran war and the frequent Iranian missile and drone launches targeting U.S. assets in America’s allies in the Gulf have now prompted the UAE’s authorities to consider spreading the campus into a network of data centers across the UAE and measures to better protect critical facilities from missile and drone attacks, according to Reuters’ anonymous sources, including a U.S. official, a Western diplomat, and industry executives.
G42, which leads the project, told Reuters in response to queries about changes to the original plan that “The project’s specifics are subject to continuous review in line with the security, resilience and operational standards expected of critical infrastructure at this scale.”
Earlier this year, Iranian drones damaged three Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities in the region, with direct hits on two UAE facilities and one hit on a facility in Bahrain.
Following several such attacks and attempts at attacks in the Persian Gulf, the UAE began reviewing the plans for the massive AI data campus, according to Reuters’ sources. The campus was planned to be one of the biggest such facilities outside the United States, but keeping critical infrastructure out of harm’s way and reassuring investors could alter the plans.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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