Amazon Web Services confirmed in early March that drone strikes damaged three of its data center facilities in the Middle East -- two in the United Arab Emirates hit directly and one in Bahrain damaged by a strike in close proximity. [1] The attacks, which occurred on March 1-2, caused structural damage, power disruptions, and in the UAE facilities, triggered fire suppression systems that produced additional water damage to server infrastructure. [2]

More than a month later, the AWS Health Dashboard continues to report intermittent service degradation in the me-central-1 and me-south-1 regions. [3] AWS has not declared full recovery. Reuters reported that the company expected the recovery timeline to be "prolonged due to physical damage" -- a phrase that acknowledges what the cloud industry had never before confronted: a sovereign military attacking commercial data infrastructure. [1]

The damage is no longer hypothetical context for the IRGC's March 31 target list naming 18 U.S. companies. It is precedent. Amazon's Bahrain facility was hit before the list was published. The list promises more of the same. [4]

-- DAVID CHEN, Beijing