Persian Gulf states push ahead with AI megaprojects even as data centers become military targets

Building the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure is hard enough without someone literally trying to blow it up. That’s the situation facing the Persian Gulf’s wealthiest nations, which are plowing ahead with massive data center buildouts even as the facilities themselves have become targets in the escalating US-Iran conflict. On March 1, 2026, Iranian drones struck two AWS data centers in the UAE and one in Bahrain, framing the facilities as extensions of US military operations in the region. The scale of what’s being built The numbers involved are staggering. The UAE’s Stargate UAE project envisions a 5 GW AI campus, with an initial 1 GW operational cluster already taking shape in Abu Dhabi. To put that in perspective, a single gigawatt can power roughly 750,000 homes. The UAE is dedicating five times that capacity to AI compute alone. Saudi Arabia is pursuing its own parallel track through the HUMAIN initiative, targeting 1.9 GW of AI compute capacity by 2030 and an even more ambitious 6.9 GW by 2034. Combined, the Gulf region is on pace to reach 8 to 10 GW of collective AI compute capacity, a figure that would make the region one of the most significant AI infrastructure hub...