The US-Israel-Iran conflict, which began on February 28, 2026, with operations “Epic Fury” and “Roaring Lion,” will be remembered in military history as the first war in which artificial intelligence was used extensively in primary roles in command centers. While the military integrations of US-based giants like OpenAI, xAI, and Palantir are already known in the field, the use of a variant of Anthropic (Claude), with relaxed ethical barriers (despite US administration restrictions), in the decision-making processes of this operation opened a new chapter in the military AI league. Conversely, although the parties have never made official statements and have given generic answers to questions about supporting Iran, Iran is also likely trying to create a “counter-AI shield or attack platform,” probably with the support of China’s SenseTime and Russia’s Sber-based algorithmic support.

One thing is certain; Now, in addition to military bases and ports—the primary targets of classical warfare—parties are targeting data centers with the same strategic weight as nuclear facilities and ammunition depots. This is a natural consequence of the inevitable “symbiotic dependence” between military systems and technology. Undoubtedly, data centers have become the Digital Chokepoints of the modern economy and defense. Just as the mining of the Strait of Hormuz, the blocking of the Panama Canal, or the closure of the Strait of Malacca would halt the flow of oil, trade, energy, and food, plunging the world into chaos; striking data centers risks instantly paralyzing civilization by ending the “fluidity of data.”

Indeed, on March 1, 2026, Iran, for the first time in history, considered a commercial cloud infrastructure as an “equivalent strategic target,” striking the Amazon (AWS) mec1-az2 Availability Zone data center in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with missiles and drones. The shocking news of a "data center fire and power outage" painfully demonstrated to the world how fragile the physical security of the digital world is, and that technology centers are now on the same target list as nuclear facilities.

Data centers are targets because when they are struck, armies are not only "blind," but also transformed into "brain-dead" giants. Advanced command and control networks process millions of data points in seconds, reducing target identification time from minutes to instantaneous responses. Similarly, autonomous UAVs and swarm drones on the battlefield operate via cloud connectivity. When this connection is severed, these technological marvels collapse like soldiers shot, becoming "mindless" munitions. In other words, a data center is not just the fuel for an autonomous tank, but its will.

The physical destruction of data centers (Kinetic Strike) has more lasting and devastating consequences than cyberattacks. When banking systems, logistics networks, and e-government services cease to exist, the public faces the risk of returning to an "analog" Middle Ages. In a world where even food and water distribution is managed by cloud-based algorithms, server rack burnouts and empty supermarket shelves due to logistical problems mean hunger, epidemics, social unrest, and chaos. The areas where data traffic is concentrated globally—-Virginia (USA) and Dublin (Ireland) (North Atlantic traffic),
-Singapore and Hong Kong/Guangdong (China) (Asia-Pacific axis),
-Mumbai and Chennai (India) (South Asian IT power),
-Persian Gulf (UAE/Saudi Arabia) (Digital Silk Road)—are currently the world's most vulnerable digital bottlenecks.

While the sinking of a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz triggers global inflation, a strike on a "Hyperscale" data center in Virginia, Hong Kong, or Dubai could instantly vaporize global supply chains and financial markets. Therefore, the future for nations that cannot achieve data sovereignty and fortify their digital infrastructure with distributed architecture is... It wouldn't be entirely wrong to say "dark," rather than "cloudy"...