00:00Does the Iran war put your internet at risk?
00:03Since the escalation began, Iran's regime has repeatedly threatened to target what they call
00:08enemy technology infrastructure. Here's the reality. US tech companies are the
00:14backbone of IT infrastructure in the Middle East. They run giant data hubs in Bahrain,
00:20UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. But the implications run even deeper, literally.
00:26In the seabed of the Strait of Hormuz lie fiber optic cables. Think of them as the arteries of
00:32the global internet. If they are damaged, the impact is felt beyond the Gulf region.
00:38So, what does this mean for you? What if data centers were affected?
00:43Targeted drone strikes can take regional data centers offline. Recently, Amazon has reported
00:49new problems with its AWS cloud services due to Iranian drone activity in Bahrain.
00:55In March, when Amazon data hubs in the UAE and Bahrain were hit,
01:00key apps and even major banks went down, because even the data center's backups failed.
01:05Ride-hailing apps, food delivery vanished and major banks went dark in the region.
01:11The outages lasted for weeks. Also because the conflict made it hard to bring in the
01:16hardware needed for the repairs. But the fallout doesn't stop in the Gulf region.
01:21The Gulf data hubs are crucial intersections. Companies from Southeast Asia use them to handle
01:26their digital workload and to route their data to the rest of the world. For that,
01:31they use undersea cable networks. And these cables carry over 95% of global internet traffic.
01:38When a key access point goes down, traffic reroutes to other cables, which can overload data highways
01:45and slow down everything. When India and Pakistan were affected in early March, it wasn't a total blackout.
01:51But there were huge spikes in latency, causing problems even in everyday applications.
01:57In other parts of the world, like Europe or Latin America, such spikes were only minimal.
02:02But some companies that rely on Amazon Web Services reported disruptions nevertheless.
02:08Now, let's dive deeper. Pun intended.
02:12Given that these undersea cables are so important, how much are they at risk?
02:17What if cables break? As you can see on this map, several undersea cables run directly through the
02:23Strait of Hormuz. Even if these cables have not been targeted directly so far, they are in danger right now.
02:29Through sea mines and through warships or stuck oil tankers dropping anchors.
02:35Normally, if a cable breaks, a specialized ship fixes it in a few days. But you can send a slow
02:41-moving
02:41stationary repair ship into a minefield or a missile strike zone. Both systems we mentioned,
02:48the data hubs powering our apps and the undersea cables handling the traffic, are built on the principle
02:53of redundancy. Meaning, if one data center fails, there are others that can handle the load.
02:59And if one cable breaks, the traffic can be routed another way. But in 2026 we are learning the hard
03:06way,
03:06redundancy only works if the backup isn't in the line of fire too. Bottom line, even if you are not
03:13directly affected right now, data hubs and undersea cables will play a growing role in political conflicts
03:19in the future. That's it from me, see you next time.
03:22Bye.
03:23Peace out.
03:23Peace out.
03:25Peace out.
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