The national security implications of building frontier AI data centers overseas

Brookings Institution | Derek Belle, Nitya Nadgir, Alejandra Rocha, Elham Tabassi, Valerie Wirtschafter, and Thomas Wright

Iranian drone strikes during Operation Epic Fury damaged three Amazon Web Services facilities in Bahrain on March 1, demonstrating the vulnerability of overseas tech assets. Hyperscaler capital expenditure is projected to top $1 trillion by 2027, but domestic power grid delays push computing infrastructure abroad. Agreements signed by President Donald Trump in May 2025 with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates place advanced computing hubs in volatile zones.

Siting compute capacity overseas exposes model weights, specialized chips, and proprietary training data to host-government legal compulsion, adversary espionage, and physical destruction. While real-time inference requires proximity to end users, centralized model training clusters remain vulnerable to political coercion and targeted attacks. Foreign hosting creates structural dependencies that constrain diplomatic flexibility and risk transferring technological advantages to rivals like China, mirroring supply vulnerabilities in semiconductor manufacturing while forcing additional defense commitments to safeguard vulnerable remote facilities.

Comment

Physical protection of gigawatt-scale compute nodes presents unprecedented sustainment challenges in sub-threshold combat zones. While traditional server architecture tolerates localized network rerouting, high-density AI clusters depend on uninterruptible cooling infrastructure, liquid chillers, and external high-voltage substations that cannot be easily armoured. As demonstrated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps strikes against the AWS Bahrain facilities, cheap uncrewed aerial vehicles can inflict disproportionate operational disruption without penetrating primary physical structures.

Maintaining operational uptime for such facilities during active hostilities requires dedicated point-defence missile systems, such as the MIM-104 Patriot or NASAMS, redirecting high-cost interceptors to shield commercial server farms. Sourcing industrial replacement transformers and specialized cooling loops during a regional crisis creates immediate supply-chain bottlenecks. Consequently, tactical defence of foreign compute clusters diverts air-defence capacity from sovereign naval assets deployed in the Persian Gulf.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If forward-deployed compute hubs like the AWS Bahrain facilities require dedicated MIM-104 Patriot batteries for point defence, does the operational cost of shielding commercial server infrastructure outweigh the strategic advantage of hosting frontier AI capabilities near regional partners?

The pattern suggests that dedicated air-defence allocation for commercial data centres creates an unsustainable asymmetry against low-cost uncrewed aerial vehicles. While sovereign host funding provides initial capital efficiency, the long-term operational burden shifts directly to military assets tasked with protecting static infrastructure. The evidence points toward a strategic tipping point where physical vulnerability in high-risk theatres outweighs any regional latency or diplomatic benefits.

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