The Gulf’s rise as a global technology hub is now under growing threat after posts circulated on channels linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) named major US tech firms in the region as potential targets.

The statement, circulated on IRGC-affiliated Telegram channels, listed 18 companies, including Cisco, Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, IBM, Nvidia, Tesla, Boeing and Abu Dhabi-based AI firm G42.

It accused them of enabling what it described as Israeli and US “terror operations” through their information and artificial intelligence technologies and declared them “legitimate targets”.

The statement warned that firms involved would face retaliation for attacks against Iranian targets and advised employees to leave their workplaces, setting a deadline of 8pm Tehran time (1630GMT) on Wednesday.

With that deadline now passed, attention has shifted to what such threats mean for the conflict and for the Gulf’s rapidly expanding digital infrastructure.

“The Iranians are trying to raise costs for the US and the Gulf to coerce them into ending their operations,” Sam Winter-Levy, a fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Anadolu.

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“They’re trying to strike at the tech industry, the symbolic heart of US-Gulf cooperation.”

Which US tech investments are at risk?

Major US tech firms have invested heavily in the Gulf, building a fast-growing network of data centres, cloud services and artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The region has become attractive due to access to energy and relatively low electricity costs, helping position it as an emerging global tech hub. According to the New York Times, trillions of dollars of planned investments now hang in the balance.

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Several large-scale projects highlight what’s at stake.

Companies including Cisco, OpenAI, Oracle and Nvidia are involved in the planned Stargate UAE data centre campus, expected to be the largest project of its kind outside the US.

With an estimated cost of $30 billion, the sprawling complex of 26 square kilometres is expected to go live this year.

Oracle already operates cloud regions — localised clusters of data centres that store data and run digital services closer to users — in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, forming part of the backbone for government and private-sector digital services, as well as in Jeddah and Riyadh.

In 2024, Google announced a partnership with Saudi entities to expand its cloud presence and boost AI capabilities, including plans for a major AI hub backed by a $10b joint investment with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The year prior, it launched cloud regions in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Microsoft has also expanded its footprint in the region, announcing a $1.5b investment in Abu Dhabi-based AI firm G42 in 2024, after establishing a cloud data centre region in Qatar in 2022.

Nvidia is building AI infrastructure in Saudi Arabia through partnerships with local entities, including HUMAIN, developing large-scale AI factories with a projected capacity of up to 500 megawatts and powered by hundreds of thousands of its advanced chips.

Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced plans to invest more than $5.3b to establish a new AI zone with specialised infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.

AWS already operates facilities in the UAE and Bahrain, some of which have been affected by the war.

On March 2, the company said two of its data centre facilities in the UAE and one in Bahrain sustained physical damage from drone strikes, marking the first known case of commercial cloud infrastructure being hit during military action.

On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that another strike damaged Amazon cloud operations in Bahrain.

Potential impacts of attacks on Gulf tech infrastructure

Until recently, physical attacks on commercial cloud infrastructure and data centres were not seriously modelled as a risk, Lukasz Olejnik, an independent technology and security expert, told Anadolu.

“Now they are not theoretical and will remain so, unless long-term agreements or new technologies emerge,” he said, adding that insurers, corporate boards and infrastructure planners must now treat such threats as a real possibility.

Data centres are particularly vulnerable due to their reliance on uninterrupted power, cooling and connectivity, said Winter-Levy, describing them as “soft targets”.

“If the Iranians knock out their chillers or their power supply, they can take an entire facility offline, potentially causing extensive disruption,” he said, warning that even brief outages can cause losses worth millions of dollars for businesses.

The economic impact could unfold on two levels, he said, starting with immediate service disruptions.

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Companies relying on Gulf-based cloud infrastructure could lose access to applications, data and payment systems, affecting sectors such as banking, logistics and digital services.

Over the longer term, such incidents risk undermining the Gulf’s position as a safe and reliable hub for global data.

“The Gulf states have spent years and billions of dollars pitching themselves as safe, stable homes for the world’s data,” Winter-Levy said. “That pitch is now significantly harder to make. Every investor, every enterprise customer, every insurance underwriter is reassessing risk.”

“All of this will drive up the costs for the Gulf to attract business,” he added.

What does targeting tech firms mean for the course of war?

The threats point to a broader strategic shift, analysts say.

“Iran is signalling that it does not distinguish between the civilian and military functions of American companies,” said Winter-Levy.

“From Tehran’s perspective, a company that provides cloud services to the Pentagon and to a Dubai bank is a single target, not two separate entities.”

The scope of the companies named in the statement reinforces that view.

The list spans cloud providers such as AWS and Oracle, as well as defence contractors like Boeing and Palantir, financial institutions including JP Morgan and industrial firms such as General Electric.

“There is a logic here beyond retaliation,” said Winter-Levy.

“By threatening the full spectrum of Western commercial presence in the Gulf, Iran is raising the cost of the US-Gulf economic relationship itself.”