00:0024 hours ago, we went to our correspondent in the EMEA region and went through the specific sites
00:06that have been targeted, the reason why, and just for the audience, Amazon owns and operates some
00:13of those facilities. You've had time to do your own research and study of the data. How does this
00:19fit in, this idea that data centers are a target in the context of a war in Iran and a
00:25conflict
00:25between the United States and Iran? Sure, yeah. So thanks so much for having me. Data centers are
00:31becoming increasingly central to a very broad range of economic life, national security activities,
00:36and they are fundamentally soft targets. So for the Iranians looking for targets that they could
00:41hit that could cause disruption, could try to broaden the conflict, could bring the conflict
00:45home to the United States, targeting a data center that is operated by a U.S. company, that's a symbol
00:50of U.S.-Gulf cooperation, it becomes quite an appealing target given how easy they are to hit.
00:54With a drone, with a barrage of missile strikes, given how fragile and vulnerable these facilities
01:01are. Vulnerable. How do you protect a data center in this case?
01:07Sure. So it's hard. So fundamentally, these data centers are filled with GPUs. They're very
01:12fragile. It's quite easy to take out a chiller, which are these things that keep the data centers
01:17cool, keep the servers cool, or to take out a generator or a transformers that provide electricity
01:22to the data center. There are things you can do. You can use more reinforced concrete. You can try to
01:27harden the facilities. You can use air defense systems, anti-drone devices, jamming systems,
01:32anti-missile systems. But all of this drives up the costs of building a data center, and none of
01:37this will guarantee security against a kind of swarm of cheap drones. And it's very, very expensive to
01:42protect against these sorts of cheap strikes. So there are things you can do to protect them. I think
01:46historically, these companies and the governments have been much more focused on protecting data
01:50centers from cyber attacks, protecting them from trespasses, but much less focused on strikes from
01:55drones or from missiles, which is an inevitable risk, I think, to building expensive infrastructure
02:02in a region where drones and missile strikes are, unfortunately, a real risk to worry about.
02:07And you saw this risk. You wrote about it in July in an opinion column, really saying that the Gulf
02:12is not a
02:13place to be building out these data centers, Sam. But also, the Gulf is the place, longer term,
02:18with more abundant energy. And the Gulf is the place that also needs AI for its own citizens. So
02:25what do they do?
02:26Yeah, so the Gulf has huge ambitions in the AI race, and they're very appealing partners for the
02:30United States for many reasons. Energy, capital, all the things you mentioned. So I think it's
02:35inevitable that the data centers are going to be built out in the region. I think this underscores the
02:41risks of building the biggest computing clusters there, the most critical infrastructure. I think that the
02:46United States should think very carefully about where it wants to site that sort of infrastructure.
02:50But some degree of data center construction is inevitable in the Gulf. But I think governments
02:54need to think, governments and the companies that operate the data centers need to think much more
02:57carefully about their resilience plans, their redundancy plans, how to protect them from these sorts
03:01of physical risks. Because as you said, this was a foreseeable risk. These targets are soft.
03:07The more they become symbols of technological might, the more they become central to economic life,
03:12the more appealing they become as targets for non-state actors or for hostile states that want
03:16to cause disruption.
03:17Okay, there is a lot that goes into a decision as to where to put a data center, not only
03:21about
03:21the power that's accessible, the water, but the people and the labor and the costs, Sam. Therefore,
03:27with your Carnegie and Talman international peace hat on, where should these be built from a US
03:34perspective?
03:35So I think these data centers are going to be built all over the world. I think we should be
03:40building them all over the world. I think for the biggest, most important, most critical computing
03:45clusters, the United States should be thinking carefully about citing them in close US allies,
03:51NATO states, within the United States itself, areas where they can be kind of protected from
03:55attacks or where they can be more easily protected from attacks. That's not to say that we shouldn't be
03:59building big facilities in the Gulf too, but probably not our most critical computing clusters. And I would
04:05also say that these drone strikes do also underscore that data centers all over the world could be a
04:10threat. So even a data center in Europe could well be targeted by Russian sabotage, for example.
04:15You know, these are fragile sites wherever they're...
04:18Sam, you know, the argument that the Gulf is not the place to build the world's AI infrastructure,
04:23the reality is that is exactly where they're building the world's AI infrastructure. And it's where the
04:29capital is coming from. And it's where NVIDIA and AMD have deals to send their chips. And you have
04:35capital flowing from the Gulf into the United States to fund infrastructure projects in the United
04:41States. I mean, I welcome any response to that reality that you have.
04:48Yeah, so I think, you know, as I said, I think that is the reality to some extent. The question
04:52is to
04:53what extent we go forward with these types of projects. You know, it remains to be seen what
04:58this will look like after this conflict. I think it's certainly going to drive up insurance premiums.
05:02It may make it harder to attract engineering talent to build out these data centers. I think
05:06this won't make the UAE or the Saudi Arabia rethink their plans to any great extent. But I think it
05:11will
05:11complicate those plans. I think, you know, it should make the US government much more cautious about
05:18where it's like its most critical data centers. But again, as I said, data centers are going to be built
05:22everywhere. I think this attack should be a wake up call that all of these data centers need to think
05:27much more seriously about physical attacks and not just cyber attacks, digital disruptions,
05:30natural disasters.
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