CloudTech is part of the TechForge Publications seriesView AllAI NewsDeveloperIoT NewsMarketing TechTechHQTech Wire AsiaTelecomsView AllAI NewsDeveloperIoT NewsMarketing TechTechHQTech Wire AsiaTelecomsTechForge SearchCategoriesCloud in ActionCloud MigrationCloud ROI & CostInternal Change ManagementMissteps & LessonsSME & Startup CloudEditorial DeskAnnouncements & AnalysisForecasts & TrendsMigrations: Behind the ScenesTechEx EventsFeaturesInterviewsPodcastsSponsored ContentVideosWebinarsFuture of CloudAI & CloudCloud EthicsEdge & Distributed CloudOpen CloudQuantum & CloudServerless ArchitectureSustainable CloudIndustry PerspectivesEducation & ResearchFinanceHealthcare & Life SciencesLegal & HRMedia, Gaming & CreativePublic SectorRetail & ConsumerMarket IntelligenceCloud StartupsEarnings & Market ShareEvent CoverageMergers & AcquisitionsVendor Roadmaps & LeadershipSecurity, Privacy & TrustCloud CybersecurityCyber Security & Cloud ExpoEncryption & Data PrivacyGovernance, Risk & ComplianceIdentity & AccessStrategy & Decision-MakingChoosing a Cloud StrategyFinOps & BudgetsLock-In & ExitMulti- & Hybrid CloudProcurement & ContractsSkills & HiringTechnology StackBig VendorsContainers & KubernetesDatabases & Data PlatformsInfrastructure as CodeObservability & MonitoringXaaS ModelsEventsResourcesVideo InterviewsPodcastsAll ResourcesMoreEditorial OpportunitiesAbout UsContact Us SearchCategoriesCloud in ActionCloud MigrationCloud ROI & CostInternal Change ManagementMissteps & LessonsSME & Startup CloudEditorial DeskAnnouncements & AnalysisForecasts & TrendsMigrations: Behind the ScenesTechEx EventsFeaturesInterviewsPodcastsSponsored ContentVideosWebinarsFuture of CloudAI & CloudCloud EthicsEdge & Distributed CloudOpen CloudQuantum & CloudServerless ArchitectureSustainable CloudIndustry PerspectivesEducation & ResearchFinanceHealthcare & Life SciencesLegal & HRMedia, Gaming & CreativePublic SectorRetail & ConsumerMarket IntelligenceCloud StartupsEarnings & Market ShareEvent CoverageMergers & AcquisitionsVendor Roadmaps & LeadershipSecurity, Privacy & TrustCloud CybersecurityCyber Security & Cloud ExpoEncryption & Data PrivacyGovernance, Risk & ComplianceIdentity & AccessStrategy & Decision-MakingChoosing a Cloud StrategyFinOps & BudgetsLock-In & ExitMulti- & Hybrid CloudProcurement & ContractsSkills & HiringTechnology StackBig VendorsContainers & KubernetesDatabases & Data PlatformsInfrastructure as CodeObservability & MonitoringXaaS ModelsEventsResourcesVideo InterviewsPodcastsAll ResourcesMoreEditorial OpportunitiesAbout UsContact Us Subscribe Subscribe SearchCategoriesCloud in ActionCloud MigrationCloud ROI & CostInternal Change ManagementMissteps & LessonsSME & Startup CloudEditorial DeskAnnouncements & AnalysisForecasts & TrendsMigrations: Behind the ScenesTechEx EventsFeaturesInterviewsPodcastsSponsored ContentVideosWebinarsFuture of CloudAI & CloudCloud EthicsEdge & Distributed CloudOpen CloudQuantum & CloudServerless ArchitectureSustainable CloudIndustry PerspectivesEducation & ResearchFinanceHealthcare & Life SciencesLegal & HRMedia, Gaming & CreativePublic SectorRetail & ConsumerMarket IntelligenceCloud StartupsEarnings & Market ShareEvent CoverageMergers & AcquisitionsVendor Roadmaps & LeadershipSecurity, Privacy & TrustCloud CybersecurityCyber Security & Cloud ExpoEncryption & Data PrivacyGovernance, Risk & ComplianceIdentity & AccessStrategy & Decision-MakingChoosing a Cloud StrategyFinOps & BudgetsLock-In & ExitMulti- & Hybrid CloudProcurement & ContractsSkills & HiringTechnology StackBig VendorsContainers & KubernetesDatabases & Data PlatformsInfrastructure as CodeObservability & MonitoringXaaS ModelsEventsResourcesVideo InterviewsPodcastsAll ResourcesMoreEditorial OpportunitiesAbout UsContact Us Hamburger Toggle Menu AI & Cloud, Cloud Computing, Cloud in Action, Features, Future of Cloud, Security, Privacy & TrustUAE redesigns 5GW AI data centre plan around physical securityMuhammad Zulhusni14th September 2026 Share this story: Tags:AIcloudcloud infrastructurecybersecuritydata centreSecurityCategories::AI & CloudCloud ComputingCloud in ActionFeaturesFuture of CloudSecurity, Privacy & TrustThe UAE is reviewing the design of its planned 5GW AI data centre project after Iranian missile and drone attacks damaged cloud infrastructure in the UAE and Bahrain, reported.Originally planned as a 10-square-mile campus in Abu Dhabi, the project will now likely comprise a network of data centres spread across the UAE, according to people familiar with the plans.Six people familiar with the discussions said the final design, construction costs, and potential effects on the project schedule have not been determined.G42, the UAE-based technology company leading the project, said work on the AI campus was progressing as planned.“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,” G42 said in a statement to .From cloud redundancy to physical attackMeasures under consideration include placing some infrastructure underground, using blast-resistant materials, adding backup power and cooling systems, and incorporating equipment designed to defend against drones and missiles.Facilities handling sensitive data are also being considered for locations inside mountains, according to people familiar with the plans.The review follows physical damage to AWS infrastructure in the region earlier this year.
AWS said two of its facilities in the UAE were directly struck by drones, while a strike near one of its Bahrain facilities caused physical damage to infrastructure.The strikes caused structural damage and disrupted power delivery, while fire-suppression activity resulted in additional water damage in some cases.Two of the three Availability Zones in AWS’s UAE region were significantly impaired.Customers experienced degraded availability across services including EC2, S3, DynamoDB, Lambda, Kinesis, CloudWatch, and RDS.AWS’s account of the disruption also showed how the loss of multiple zones affected a regional cloud service.
Amazon S3 continued operating normally when one UAE Availability Zone was initially powered off because the service is designed to withstand the loss of a single zone.Error rates increased after the second zone became impaired, with AWS reporting high failure rates for data ingestion and retrieval.AWS advised affected customers to direct S3 data to another region and later recommended that customers activate disaster recovery plans, recover from remote backups, and redirect applications away from the affected regions.Cloud providers already use physical separation to limit infrastructure failures.AWS designs Availability Zones as separate failure domains with independent power, networking, and mechanical infrastructure, while Microsoft uses physically separated Azure zones with independent power, cooling, and networking.AWS says Availability Zones are placed at meaningful physical distances from one another to reduce the risk of correlated failures while remaining close enough to support low-latency networking and data replication.
Its architecture guidance lists utility outages, fibre disruption, fires, floods, and earthquakes among the events that physical separation is intended to contain.The company’s Well-Architected Framework recommends considering multi-region disaster recovery when an event creates a risk of losing components across multiple Availability Zones.Microsoft similarly distinguishes between zone-level redundancy and architectures intended to protect workloads against a full regional outage.On April 30, AWS said its UAE region was unable to reliably support customer applications because of damage from the conflict and recommended migrating accessible resources to other regions and restoring inaccessible resources from remote backups.AWS said the restoration process was expected to take several months.Cloud services in the region remained disrupted as of September 11, based on the latest AWS updates available at the time.Physical protection is also included in established information-security frameworks.
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology’s SP 800-53 controls address physical and environmental protection and identify hostile attacks, natural disasters, structural failures, and human error among the threats organisations should assess when planning alternate processing capacity.NIST recommends separating primary and alternate processing sites to reduce their exposure to the same threats, while noting that physical distance can be less relevant when the threat is a hostile attack.Its guidance also recognises geographically distributed architectures and cloud failover as options for maintaining processing capacity when a primary site becomes unavailable.Reworking the 5GW AI campusThe UAE-US AI Campus was announced in May 2025 as part of a technology agreement between the two countries.The U.S.
Department of Commerce said the site was planned to provide 5GW of AI data centre capacity in Abu Dhabi, with G42 leading its development alongside US technology companies.The original announcement described a single campus spanning about 10 square miles.The Commerce Department said it would host US hyperscalers and approved cloud service providers, providing a regional platform from which those companies could offer services to markets within roughly 3,200km of the UAE.The original plan called for nuclear, solar, and gas power.The revised plans point to a different physical configuration for later phases, with capacity potentially spread across several locations instead of remaining concentrated at one Abu Dhabi site.The number of sites, their geographic separation, and the way power, networking, and compute capacity would be divided between them have not been disclosed.
The proposed distributed design therefore cannot yet be directly compared with the Availability Zone architecture used by hyperscale cloud providers.The first major deployment within the project is Stargate UAE, a 1GW compute cluster being built by G42.OpenAI has said the project involves Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco, and SoftBank.Stargate UAE is a planned 1GW cluster within the wider 5GW UAE-US AI Campus.OpenAI said when it announced the project in May 2025 that the first 200MW was expected to go live in 2026.Security requirements were already part of the original US-UAE agreement.
The Commerce Department said the two governments agreed to controls covering access to advanced AI technology, including Know Your Customer procedures for organisations accessing the campus’s compute resources.The Commerce Department said those measures were intended to prevent technology diversion and control access to the compute resources.The latest plans add a separate physical-security dimension covering the location, construction, utilities, and protection of the infrastructure hosting that capacity.Construction of the first 1GW Stargate UAE phase has already begun.That phase is expected to continue with modifications intended to protect it against aerial attacks, while later capacity will likely be distributed across multiple locations if the revised plans proceed.See also: Microsoft reportedly targets 38GW of data centre capacity by 2032Want to learn more about Cloud Computing from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London.
The comprehensive event is part of TechEx and is co-located with other leading technology events, click here for more information.Cloud Computing News is powered by TechForge Media.Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars here.About the Author Muhammad ZulhusniJournalist As a tech journalist, Zul focuses on topics including cloud computing, cybersecurity, and disruptive technology in the enterprise industry.He has expertise in moderating webinars and presenting content on video, in addition to having a background in networking technology.Related Microsoft reportedly targets 38GW of data centre capacity by 203211th September 2026 Amazon and Qualcomm expand AI data centre chip deal for AWS9th September 2026 EU cloud sovereignty rules face defence pushback over US providers7th September 2026 AWS and Microsoft launch multicloud link between AWS and Azure3rd September 2026 Microsoft reportedly targets 38GW of data centre capacity by 203211th September 2026 Amazon and Qualcomm expand AI data centre chip deal for AWS9th September 2026 EU cloud sovereignty rules face defence pushback over US providers7th September 2026 AWS and Microsoft launch multicloud link between AWS and Azure3rd September 2026 Join our CommunitySubscribe now to get all our premium content and latest tech news delivered straight to your inbox Click here Popular XaaS ModelsSoftLayer beefs up its bare metal offering, available on hourly basis 41168 view(s)Cloud ROI & Cost, Interviews, Sponsored Content, Sustainable CloudRipple effect: Xylem’s sustainable water solutions for Europe’s data centres 20730 view(s)Cloud Computing, XaaS ModelsConcern over cloud storage security remains says Spiceworks – but good news for OneDrive 12749 view(s)Big Vendors, Cloud Computing, Cloud Cybersecurity, Market Intelligence, Security, Privacy & Trust10 real-life cloud security failures and what we can learn from them 7197 view(s)XaaS ModelsSoftLayer beefs up its bare metal offering, available on hourly basis 41168 view(s)Cloud ROI & Cost, Interviews, Sponsored Content, Sustainable CloudRipple effect: Xylem’s sustainable water solutions for Europe’s data centres 20730 view(s)Cloud Computing, XaaS ModelsConcern over cloud storage security remains says Spiceworks – but good news for OneDrive 12749 view(s)Big Vendors, Cloud Computing, Cloud Cybersecurity, Market Intelligence, Security, Privacy & Trust10 real-life cloud security failures and what we can learn from them 7197 view(s) See all Latest View All Latest Governance, Risk & Compliance7th September 2026EU cloud sovereignty rules face defence pushback over US providers Cloud in Action3rd September 2026AWS and Microsoft launch multicloud link between AWS and Azure AI & Cloud27th August 2026AWS to add 2 million Nvidia GPUs as cloud capacity demand grows Governance, Risk & Compliance7th September 2026EU cloud sovereignty rules face defence pushback over US providers Cloud in Action3rd September 2026AWS and Microsoft launch multicloud link between AWS and Azure AI & Cloud27th August 2026AWS to add 2 million Nvidia GPUs as cloud capacity demand grows SubscribeAll our premium content and latest tech news delivered straight to your inbox Subscribe ExploreAbout UsContact UsNewsletterPrivacy PolicyCookie PolicyAbout UsContact UsNewsletterPrivacy PolicyCookie PolicyReach Our AudienceAdvertisePost a Press ReleaseContact UsAdvertisePost a Press ReleaseContact UsCategoriesCloud in ActionEditorial DeskFeaturesFuture of CloudIndustry PerspectivesMarket IntelligenceSecurity, Privacy & TrustTechnology StackStrategy & Decision-MakingAll CategoriesCloud in ActionEditorial DeskFeaturesFuture of CloudIndustry PerspectivesMarket IntelligenceSecurity, Privacy & TrustTechnology StackStrategy & Decision-MakingAll CategoriesOther PublicationsExplore AllAI NewsDeveloperIoT NewsMarketing TechTechHQTech Wire AsiaTelecomsExplore AllAI NewsDeveloperIoT NewsMarketing TechTechHQTech Wire AsiaTelecomsCloudTech News is part of TechForge SubscribeAll our premium content and latest tech news delivered straight to your inbox
Read More
