Data Centres Become Prime Targets As Drone Warfare Transforms Modern Battlefield
As data centres become central to digital economies and military operations, attacks on them in future wars could disrupt both command systems and societies.
By Anubha Jain
Published : March 14, 2026 at 12:27 PM IST
Bengaluru: Modern warfare is entering a phase where autonomous drones, cloud infrastructure, and artificial intelligence (AI) are no longer just supporting tools but central targets and weapons in their own right. The cloud runs on data centres, and those facilities now have physical addresses that can be hit by drones or precision strikes. The result is a harsher, more vertical battlefield where dominance is measured not only in missiles and tanks, but also in code, computing power, and the resilience of digital infrastructure.
From Operation Sindoor To War On Iran
India’s Operation Sindoor illustrates how militaries are redesigning campaigns around machine speed and precision, integrating unmanned systems and AI-enabled targeting to achieve high-value objectives with minimal human exposure. The same technological logic is now reshaping conflicts beyond South Asia, where the battlefield is expanding from traditional military assets to the digital infrastructure that powers modern economies.
Iran’s recent retaliation following US–Israeli strikes pushed this logic further by placing commercial cloud infrastructure in the line of fire. According to Amazon Web Services (AWS), drones damaged three of its data centres in the Middle East—two in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and one in Bahrain—among the first publicly acknowledged instances of hyperscale cloud facilities becoming physical military targets in an interstate conflict.
Data centres are rapidly emerging as strategic assets and, therefore, vulnerable targets. As wars increasingly rely on drones and robotic systems, adversaries may seek to disable the command centres and cloud infrastructure that power them.
When Data Centres Become Targets
The Gulf attacks revealed a stark truth: when a major cloud region goes dark, the consequences ripple instantly into civilian life. Outages linked to the strikes disrupted banking services, aviation systems, logistics networks, and stock market operations. Millions across Dubai and Abu Dhabi reportedly woke up unable to pay for taxis, order food, or access banking apps. For nearly 11 million people in the UAE, the attacks emphasised just how deeply digital infrastructure is woven into everyday existence.
Facilities that once functioned as invisible back-end utilities have suddenly become frontline critical infrastructure, comparable to power grids, oil refineries, or telecom networks. India already classifies data centres hosting sensitive workloads as critical infrastructure. However, the Gulf incidents highlight a sobering reality: legal designation alone cannot protect a server farm from long-range drones or precision-guided munitions.
How Vulnerable Are Global Cloud Systems?
Discussing the vulnerability of global cloud systems (such as those operated by AWS, Microsoft, and Google), Renu Raman, Founder & CEO of Proximal Cloud, in an interview with ETV Bharat, emphasised that cloud platforms should now be viewed alongside other forms of critical infrastructure, such as power generation and telecommunications.
| ALSO READ: Billions Of AI Prompts, Billions In Energy Costs: The Planet Pays As Data Centres Heat Up |
“In periods of conflict, such infrastructure naturally becomes a strategic target,” he said. "Large cloud providers may attract particular attention because they are perceived as strategic technology assets and may support digital capabilities relevant to both civilian and military operations. Strengthening resilience, redundancy, and operational continuity will therefore become a major priority for the cloud industry."
Digital Sovereignty In A Vertical World
This emerging battlespace is also reshaping the politics of digital sovereignty and globalisation. For decades, the internet evolved as a horizontally interconnected system where data moved freely across borders. Today, countries are shifting toward a vertical model, seeking end-to-end control over the digital stack—from semiconductor supply chains and AI models to submarine cables and domestic cloud regions.
Recent incidents have reportedly prompted hyperscale cloud companies to explore rerouting Middle East workloads to safer regions, such as India and Singapore, with geography and geopolitics increasingly shaping the global map of computing infrastructure.
Cloud Infrastructure In A Conflict Zone
Talking about whether hyperscale infrastructure becoming a military target will fundamentally reshape cloud architecture, Renu Raman said economies of scale will continue to favour large centralised facilities. However, he noted that the immediate response should focus on stronger protection measures and more deliberate geographic design, including greater separation between regions and availability zones.
Highly distributed micro-compute networks could improve resilience, but they also introduce higher costs and operational complexity. In regions facing greater conflict risk, resilience models may need to evolve to include additional distribution and redundancy, he explained.
If data centres are now legitimate targets in modern conflict, protecting national data infrastructure requires a fundamentally new approach. Simple redundancy—maintaining multiple backups within the same metropolitan cluster—is no longer sufficient in an age of long-range precision strikes and drone swarms. Raman said that true resilience will require layered strategies, including:
- Mirrored data across multiple geographic regions and providers
- Hardened or underground facilities
- Dispersed micro data centre architectures
Raman emphasised that peacetime agreements, enabling cross‑border failover mechanisms, are equally important, since they allow essential services to continue functioning even during large‑scale disruptions. He notes that keeping backups in several facilities within the same region may reduce routine outages, but it still creates a single, easily targeted blast radius.
Adding further, he stressed that strategic resilience requires geographic diversification and clear separation between civilian and military digital systems. "Attacks on civilian cloud infrastructure should also be treated as violations under international law," he added.
A New Strategic Reality
In a conversation with ETV Bharat, Abhay A Pashilkar, Director of CSIR–National Aerospace Laboratories, said that protecting India’s critical data infrastructure during high-intensity conflicts will require robust redundancy systems. He noted that such infrastructure must be physically secured, potentially through hardened or underground facilities and that, wherever possible, details about their locations should remain confidential.
Pashilkar also pointed out that in many ongoing conflicts, countries are increasingly ignoring the principles of the Geneva Conventions. In asymmetric warfare, weaker adversaries often resort to tactics such as using civilian populations as human shields while deliberately targeting energy networks and other critical infrastructure. This makes protecting national digital systems even more complex.“The conventions of war need to be renewed and updated,” he said.
Human - AI Teaming And The New Ethics of War
AI is also moving rapidly from the laboratory into the battlefield. Reports suggest the US military recently used the AI model Claude, developed by Anthropic, through platforms built by Palantir Technologies in an operation targeting former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
The development highlights how large AI models are entering real-world planning and targeting chains. When asked how accountability should be defined if large AI models—such as those developed by Anthropic—are used in military decision chains and an AI‑assisted decision causes unintended civilian harm, Renu Raman explained that AI‑assisted systems may look different from traditional software, but the principles of accountability remain the same. He pointed out that, like any software, large language models (LLMs) can contain bugs, design flaws, or data limitations that may lead to unintended outcomes.
He noted that while LLMs may seem to generate decisions, their outputs depend on training data, model design, and the operational context in which they are used, and they still require human oversight. Therefore, accountability ultimately lies with the human actors involved, the organisations that design and build the models, and those that procure and deploy them. The owner or operator of the system remains responsible for its use and the consequences that follow.
The Space-Based Data Centre Idea
The rise of drone warfare may force governments and cloud companies to rethink where data centres are built. Siddharth Jena, Founder & CEO of Akashalabdhi Space, told ETV Bharat that the rapid spread of drone technology means governments must rethink how critical digital infrastructure is protected.
Large fixed infrastructures like data centres are increasingly exposed to autonomous drone attacks, making urgent counter‑measures such as detection, interception, and airspace management essential. Jena argues that relocating cloud infrastructure into orbit could mitigate these risks, highlighting that space assets would not only be shielded from Earth‑based drones but expandable modules would allow scalable server clusters. Meanwhile, continuous solar energy and natural cooling would provide operational independence. This move, he claims, raises the cost of aggression by forcing adversaries to escalate from covert strikes to overt anti‑satellite warfare.
As AI and autonomous systems redefine warfare, cloud infrastructure is becoming central to both economies and militaries. Protecting it—whether through stronger terrestrial defences or orbital relocation—will be critical to preventing disruptions that could destabilise entire societies.
