Thousands of Iranian missile and drone strikes hit local offices and data centers run by Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia in the United Arab Emirates after the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February, shaking the foundation of Abu Dhabi’s ambitious AI expansion and raising urgent questions about the safety of critical digital infrastructure that millions of people and businesses depend on.
The disruptions reached beyond direct military strikes. The Conversation reported that the conflict raised serious concerns about the safety of undersea cables essential for data centers and other digital infrastructure. Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, followed by a United States blockade, created supply chain bottlenecks that delayed hardware deliveries critical to keeping those facilities running. Sebastian Sons, a senior researcher at the German think tank CARPO, put the stakes plainly: “Data centers have long become critical infrastructure and need to be better protected just like oil refineries or desalination plants.”
The timing was particularly damaging. In 2017, the UAE appointed Omar Sultan Al Olama as the world’s first minister of state for artificial intelligence, tasking him with positioning the nation as the most prepared country for AI globally. By 2023, Al Olama had earned a place on TIME magazine’s inaugural TIME100 AI list, and Abu Dhabi appeared well on its way. The war threatened to derail years of strategic planning and public investment.
Meanwhile, observers caution against assuming the conflict has permanently altered the UAE’s course. Mohammed Soliman, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, told DW that the underlying conditions remain intact: “The political risk profile has changed, but the fundamentals haven’t changed. The UAE still lies at the intersection of capital flows between East and West, it still has the energy, land and political will to build AI capabilities at scale.”
The Gulf region has weathered serious crises before, from the financial collapse of the late 2000s to the COVID-19 pandemic and earlier regional conflicts. Sons noted that “during all these crises, the UAE has demonstrated a high level of resilience and found ways to reinvent itself and deal with such strategic situations.” Significant long-term damage, in his assessment, would only materialize if the Iran conflict persisted for an extended period and the UAE proved unable to adapt its business model accordingly.
Questions remain, though, about how Abu Dhabi’s global compute diplomacy will evolve. In May, a planned $1 billion mega-data-center project in Kenya was canceled, according to Business Insider Africa, signaling possible shifts in regional expansion plans.
The backbone of Abu Dhabi’s AI ambitions rests on G42, a multibillion-dollar conglomerate founded in 2018 that specializes in artificial intelligence and cloud computing. The 2019 inauguration of the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence added another cornerstone, establishing the world’s first graduate-level institution dedicated entirely to AI, with aspirations to become the “Stanford of the Middle East.” Between 35 and 58 data centers currently operate in the UAE, and Abu Dhabi is developing the Stargate UAE project, a massive cluster of data centers for OpenAI and other US companies expected to become the world’s largest data center outside the United States.
The UAE previously attempted to position itself as a technological swing state between the United States and China, but that balancing act drew scrutiny from Washington. In 2023, the UAE severed all AI ties with China, according to a report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, cementing its alignment with Western technology partners.
Persistent challenges extend beyond geopolitical disruption. A 2026 report by the Atlantic Council found that despite competitive salaries rivaling Silicon Valley, the UAE has yet to establish itself in the top tier of global AI engineering talent pools. Fatima Abu Salem, a professor of computer science at the American University of Beirut, identified the structural constraint: “Despite massive investments, much of the region’s AI ecosystem continues to rely on foundational models, algorithms and benchmarks developed elsewhere, making it a consumer rather than a primary producer. This dependence is reinforced by reliance on expatriate expertise and foreign academic institutions for advanced research, training and validation.”
The quality of locally developed Arabic AI models has drawn criticism from researchers. The Jais model received unfavorable assessments from independent researchers who found results “surprisingly poor.” When the university launched K2 Think, an open-source AI reasoning model, in September 2025, independent researchers again reported that performance claims were overstated.
Abu Dhabi appears committed to its course regardless. As Sons observed, “at this point, the UAE has invested so much into its AI strategy that turning around won’t be an option.” Al Olama captured the underlying imperative back in 2018 with a phrase that has since echoed through the nation’s strategy: “Data is the new oil.” Whether the infrastructure built to extract that value can withstand the pressures now bearing down on it is the question Abu Dhabi has yet to answer.