So are the Azure data centers still up or do the Iranians just assume Azure will take itself offline eventually? Joking but I assume Microsoft (and Google) have a DC presence in the region too.
surgical_fire 10 minutes ago [-]
Perhaps the Iranians understand that the continued existence of Microsoft is the best damage they can do to their enemies.
wutwutwat 18 minutes ago [-]
Shitty thing to joke about when people are fucking dying
cheschire 15 minutes ago [-]
Humor has been a coping mechanism since the beginning of time. Relax.
ks2048 34 minutes ago [-]
Gonna have to update my boto3 code to deal with a new value for instance.state['Name'], "bombed".
VoidWarranty 4 hours ago [-]
Not to be insensitive about the humanitarian and economic situation, but, I am curious why there are data centers in that region at all? It just seems horribly inefficient from a cooling and electricity standpoint. Not to mention water.
My pessimistic assumption is that Amazon said "yes" to handouts from regional government efforts to be relevant in tech, and that those data centers dont really matter to anyone but local politicians and monarchs who believe they have a seat at the table.
tiew9Vii 2 hours ago [-]
Middle East isn’t some 3rd world. If you can imagine futuristic cities, rich Middle East countries are already living in them with all the oil wealth.
They have phones, computers, digital services just like the US and Europe. Makes sense they want a data center in the region, close to them just like the US and Europe have data enters close to their users.
squibonpig 18 minutes ago [-]
As I understand it in most cases they have enormous wealth disparities, so like the rich in Dubai have pampered tourist experiences but there's also serious issues with like lacking basic sewer infrastructure for ordinary people.
andrepd 2 hours ago [-]
Slight tangent, but to me futuristic cities are actually places like Amsterdam, with cozy streets and bike lanes everywhere, not places like Dubai with 16-lane freeways and a quasi-slave underclass staffing the tacky malls.
mlinhares 1 hours ago [-]
Its sad that people think the "future" is all about owning stuff for yourself and not what the city can provide to its population.
FpUser 55 minutes ago [-]
Why is it said? Being independent to the degree possible is the best state for human being I think.
patmorgan23 42 minutes ago [-]
Do you think we became the dominant species by being independent loners, or by forming complex interdependent groups?
FpUser 24 minutes ago [-]
I said "independent to the degree possible", not absolutely.
I do not live in a binary world. I accept things in between.
Being part of group should be voluntary, not forced
What I definitely do not want is my life to be dictated by a few imbeciles at the top who are bought by large corps to pretend to be "by the people for the people".
defrost 17 minutes ago [-]
The solution to that is widespread active low level constant community engagement in policy and monitoring the people you hire to debate policy (politicians) and the various silo's created to enact policy (military, civil service, legal, emergancy response, etc.).
Some people think it sufficient to pay no attention and let things slide indefinitely because "ultimately we can just rise up and shoot the government".
Such people have clogged toilets.
tomjakubowski 31 minutes ago [-]
A city whose citizens mostly drive is less independent than a city whose citizens mostly ride bicycles. Bicycling infrastructure is orders of magnitude cheaper to maintain than the same for heavier, motorized vehicles. It's not just the roadways: you need service stations, tire shops, parking lots and garages. Gasoline engine cars need gasoline distributed to stations all over the place and emissions testing. All of these things take up lots of space because motor vehicles are big.
All that bicycles really need are a (much narrower) right of way and some cheap pavement. Maintenance can be done all at home, even in a small apartment. The apparent independence available to motor vehicle drivers is an illusion afforded by massive private and public investment.
FpUser 21 minutes ago [-]
In what crystal ball did you see me saying anything about bicycles? I am long time cyclist, EUC rider and have car for cases when it is needed.
orwin 21 minutes ago [-]
Maybe, but the "loneliness epidemic" articles and frankly, my own experience lead me to believe that independance is overated. Community is not though.
copperx 32 minutes ago [-]
I can't imagine the logic chain that made you come to that conclusion.
subw00f 26 minutes ago [-]
Independent? You say independent, I say parasitic. Just like any ruling class of the Middle East, especially the UAE. They’re not independent, they’re very much dependent on the semi slave labor they manage to exploit. Anything that makes life worth living is the result of collective labor. People coming together and building or learning upon previous knowledge. Hell, even your understanding of yourself comes from the social relationships you form during your formative years. This desire to be what amounts to an outcast is a defect, an abnormality imposed by the mode of production that organizes the world right now.
b00ty4breakfast 53 minutes ago [-]
I guess it depends on if you were a Gibson fan or an Asimov fan as a teen
g-mork 25 minutes ago [-]
This is a hilarious comparison given Amsterdam's own history with regard to immigration. Not even historically but contemporarily too.. Just Eat, probably the largest employer of bargain bucket labour across Europe today is headquartered in Amsterdam
refulgentis 22 minutes ago [-]
It was snippy and unclear, after the edit, its that and weak. I’d motion you just delete. Not sure literal slaves is comparable to a company that pays bargain basement salaries
g-mork 19 minutes ago [-]
It is hilarious, because it is blinded by our own self-imposed optics. It has been our policy to import droves of immigrant workers who have little hope but to take up gig economy jobs often illegally and remain fixed at the same (or worse) levels of economic status as the day they arrived in the country. Yes in Dubai they simply confiscate passports. At least they're honest about it
refulgentis 18 minutes ago [-]
It’s not comparable, other than by handwaving. It’s gross to try.
echoangle 1 hours ago [-]
If you take futuristic to mean „looking like the future“, it think the second option is sadly more futuristic for some people
andrepd 56 minutes ago [-]
Indeed, but sprawling lead-smoke infested freeways is the stuff of the 1950s; bike lanes and playgrounds and grassy tram tracks is what some cities are starting to do just now! So actually more futuristic, objectively speaking :)
2 hours ago [-]
cactusplant7374 30 minutes ago [-]
A lot of people don’t like bikes. I am down for salty licorice though.
brcmthrowaway 38 minutes ago [-]
And yet Amsterdam has a world famous seedy district
reaperducer 14 minutes ago [-]
And yet Amsterdam has a world famous seedy district
What world-class city doesn't?
And if you think there aren't hookers in Dubai, then I don't know what to tell you.
RobertoG 6 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
lolive 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hdgvhicv 1 hours ago [-]
Oil is required to get around cities like Austin, not to get around cities like Amsterdam
surgical_fire 52 minutes ago [-]
So... The future is Dubai? I am still to hear a better argument in favor of extinction.
This reminds me of a quote from "Stranger Than Fiction":
> Harold: "I don't want to eat nothing but pancakes, I want to live! I mean, who in their right mind in a choice between pancakes and living chooses pancakes?"
> Dr. Hilbert: "Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes"
nutjob2 2 hours ago [-]
If you can imagine dystopian cities, rich Middle East countries are already living in them with all the oil wealth.
r0yadar 6 minutes ago [-]
I could never relax in such a place. Will always feel spooked
haliskerbas 2 hours ago [-]
San Francisco feels the same
s/oil/tech/g
petcat 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
princevegeta89 1 hours ago [-]
> but it certainly is from a culture and society perspective. Like living in the 12th century except there are also shiny glass skyscrapers.
I am surprised looking at this seemingly racist comment.
Just because someone doesn't follow your tradition/culture doesn't mean they are living in the 12th century. There are people living everywhere in the world.
Dubai is in fact very developed, and there are not just camels living there - there are people, and many companies - albeit not so much primarily in the tech industry.
They do not have the tallest building in the world there worth $1.5 billion for no reason.
They have tech needs like any other country and I hope that clears your confusion.
dlev_pika 1 hours ago [-]
Putting aside the cast-based insane wealth inequality and the extremist religious zealotry, I suspect they are referring to the pervasive slave labor culture
I don't think you really understand Middle East countries. 94% of Iranians are literate. They are a very sophisticated culture that dates back to pre-history.
They certainly may appear backwards from our western culture but that is only superficial.
let me just say the quiet part out loud for you just in case anyone has any confusion on what you are saying: it is a brown region so it will never be good enough.
petcat 2 hours ago [-]
No we're talking specifically about how women are treated and the horrible executions for doing various things that "offend God".
marcosdumay 1 hours ago [-]
And slavery. And inter-racial interactions.
They are in a very unfortunate position.
Cyph0n 1 hours ago [-]
As opposed to the West’s genocide of millions upon millions of natives across their colonial projects? How about the millions killed as a result (directly or indirectly) of wars of aggression in the global south? Or perhaps the ongoing & unrelenting support by the West of genocide in Gaza?
Or are we not allowed to compare these things because of who the perpetrators are?
And, in the case of colonial crimes, don’t tell me to “let bygones be bygones” until apologies have been made and reparations disbursed.
In the meantime, the West is complicit and can instead direct their holier than thou attitude and patronizing lectures inwards.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 1 hours ago [-]
The people who voted for Trump are going to tell you how to be civilised. It is peak irony. So many rights are going to be taken over time and there doesn't seem to be self-awareness. Oh well, self-inflicted damage.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 1 hours ago [-]
How are they treated exactly? Like same sex couples in Japan? Oh wait we love Japan.
greggoB 1 hours ago [-]
Does Japan execute same-sex couples?
veber-alex 1 hours ago [-]
Are you joking?
Homosexuality is illegal there under the penalty of death.
tokioyoyo 1 hours ago [-]
Sorry, how are gay couples treated in Japan? People are conservative here, so no marriage, but from all gay couples I know here, they’re doing fine. Now, you can talk about PDA, but that kinda includes the straight couples as well to a point.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 1 hours ago [-]
"people are conservative". Perfect, not allowing same sex marriage is now "conservative". This is how fickle people are, perfect example.
Edit: Just as a side note, I saw western people bend over backwards to please people when I went to Japan. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy some treatment they get will be positive when you behave in such a way (like a guy bowing 5 times just for getting his photo taken, stuff that would never happen to anyone else) almost embarrassing really.
cianuro_ 1 hours ago [-]
Do you see the critiques of other cultures exclusively under the lends of skin color?
toast0 2 hours ago [-]
There's a fair amount of nearby customers. There's decent connectivity via undersea cables to Europe, East Asia, and Africa. UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are very encouraging of outside investments in their countries.
I did some work with hosts on GCP in the region and you get fun things like hosts in Israel has bad routes to customers in nearby countries and vice versa, though. I don't know if AWS has access to better routing. Definitely a case where physical distance doesn't really correspond with network distance.
c0balt 19 minutes ago [-]
To provide some practical examples, Dubai is it's own region in some online games like Valorant. It has relatively good connectivity to the region and there are enough customers there
elzbardico 21 minutes ago [-]
> local politicians and monarchs who believe they have a seat at the table.
Are you from another planet? They DO have a set at the table because gulf Sovereign Funds are one of the largest and most reliable LP pools available for VC funds for quite some time.
The current AI buildout is heavily dependent on Gulf money.
Oil is not forever and Sovereign Wealth Funds usually have goals that are not simply acruing direct investment returns, it makes sense that the folks deploying 100 billions tranches will have some say on where to put all those H100 their money will buy.
Nobody sane would predict Israel and the US would start this war.
teleforce 7 minutes ago [-]
>Nobody sane would predict Israel and the US would start this war.
Israel predicted and started the war unless you consider they're insane [1].
I think the easy answer is: because there are customers there. It’s a region full of major commercial and industrial companies. I can imagine that you’d want data centers close to where those customer are.
Technically, I can see challenges in power and cooling, but those can be overcome. The real question is-
Are there enough customers in the region to support local data centers? I think that’s clearly yes.
bawolff 3 hours ago [-]
I imagine the same reason they have a data center in places like Sao Paulo. More locally centred businesses want the low ping, and AWS wants to be your cloud compute provider of choice no matter where your target audience is.
uluyol 1 hours ago [-]
Electricity? It's probably one of the best places in the world to have a solar+battery installation?
einszwei 3 hours ago [-]
Data centers can run on closed loop cooling systems which doesn't need continuous water supply. Only bottleneck is Energy supply which the MEA area doesn't lack.
InvisibleUp 3 hours ago [-]
Hundreds of millions of people live in the Middle East and a lot of large corporations are based there. Likely they thought it would be profitable, and likely they saw some decent use.
mnky9800n 3 hours ago [-]
I think you are overfitting to temperature as a variable in this decision making equation.
rkagerer 2 hours ago [-]
If anyone here is involved in making decisions about where to locate such centers, I'd love to hear more about how geopolitical risk factors in, and whether you plan and price out contingencies (e.g. "This is near an unstable area, worst case is we write off $###M, but after Y years it breaks even. And the site is better in these other factors than alternative Z over there..."). Is it similar to factoring for geophysical instabilities (e.g. earthquake/tsunami zone) or other risks? Or would this type of event catch you completely offguard? I'm guessing insurance riders specifically exclude these types of risks.
zipy124 2 hours ago [-]
Insurance. No need to write off anything or take a loss, just a slightly increased yearly cost. The cost of said insurance is likely going to be very high for a long time now though.
rdl 24 minutes ago [-]
I insure a bunch of big datacenters (crypto mining, AI); there are really two main drivers of cost of insurance per $ of equipment:
1) Internal risks and controls within the datacenter (the company involved and their operating history, fires, flood, etc,) -- for a sufficiently "good" datacenter, you can assume it gets maxed out in quality, or at least to the point where it's no longer efficient to spend more. Most of these risks also cause service disruptions, so if you're building for high availability anyway, the rest of this stuff is usually handled as part of that. Essentially, if you're too cheap to build a good enough datacenter to max this out, you're not getting insurance anyway in most cases, so it's not a variable factor so bunch as binary or maybe a few broad risk bands (ISO tier for datacenters).
2) External risks. This is mostly natural catastrophe ("nat cat" or "cat risk"); usually there's one dominant driver of that ("severe convective storms" in Texas; floods and hurricanes in places like Florida; earthquakes in California). In some places it's multiple risks (Japan has both earthquake/tsunami and typhoon). This drives the majority of insurance premium.
War risk, geopolitical, political risk, terrorism, SRCC ("strikes, riots, and civil commotion") are in a third category -- often essentially not a factor (e.g. for a $200mm facility in rural Texas), but often handled through special programs at a national level or specialty insurance. A lot of normal policies exclude or let the client buy-back that part of the risk.
As my personal interests in war zones, drones, etc. and professional interests in crypto, AI, and datacenters seem to have converged, looking forward to seeing "quality of air defense artillery/integrated air defense system" as well as "comprehensive quick reaction force capable of dealing with national-level threats" as elements of insurance underwriting for $50B AI datacenters/"AI factories" in the future. I assume in most cases this kind of stuff will be handled by national, military, defense, or civil defense parts of the government, but could easily be contracted as well. I don't think Oracle Cloud is likely to stand up their own private army though.
wiml 1 hours ago [-]
Sure, but insurance is just outsourcing that calculation to a third party. AWS is big enough that I would think they largely self-insure, though I don't know if they do.
rkagerer 12 minutes ago [-]
My impression is most commercial insurance policies specifically exclude acts of war (and similar). The extent of systematic damage that can occur in such scenarios would easily put them into insolvency. There are exceptions for life insurance, maritime shipping, aviation etc. but I gather they're uncommon, often limited-time in nature and come with high premiums. I've never heard of the equivalent for buildings and contents. Maybe someone can enlighten me.
I also agree with the sibling comment that suggests even if there were outsourced options available, hyperscalers might do better to self-insure.
But regardless whether the company eats it, or pays it through insurance premiums, I'm still curious how this type of risk is planned for (to whatever degree it is) and accounted. I assume it must have been contemplated in a deliberate manner, somewhere on a scale of "We knew this could happen, considered x, y and z, decided the venture was justified, and here's how we planned for such a contingency" to "That was dumb siting and someone will be fired". Obviously anywhere you put a building entails some level of local risk.
As years as a volunteer firefighter we do a lot of risk management at the tactical level and have to think through assessment and potential consequences. There are lots of guidelines we learn to help produce sound decisions. But at the end of the day to apply them you may need to make a judgement call, and you need to be prepared for things to go wrong. In a way I guess I'm asking about the economic and operational equivalent at the scale of hundred-million dollar data centers.
Ps. Like the original commenter said, I'm in no way meaning to be insensitive to the larger human and regional consequences.
gorgoiler 2 hours ago [-]
I was thinking the same thing about cooling. I guess a high pressure heat pump can work in any environment if it compresses a gas up to a temperature that’s higher than ambient. Couple that with abundant cheap energy — sunny, oily, and gassy! — and it doesn’t seem unreasonable at all.
echoangle 37 minutes ago [-]
You can use a heat pump for any realistic output temperature but the efficiency goes down the higher the temperature difference has to be.
As long as sun and wind aren’t the main energy sources there, it might be economical but I wouldn’t exactly call it reasonable.
mememememememo 58 minutes ago [-]
My guess.
Edge compute. Data (coughlaugh) residency. Obsession with low latency on our 42Mb web pages.
someotherperson 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, and also pushed for by the Israeli and US governments. Tech investment is part of the Abraham Accords - i.e this is part of the prerequisites for normalization of ties with Israel.
57 minutes ago [-]
seany 1 hours ago [-]
Data governance compliance is a huge issue for some industries. "The days can't leave the country" will drive AWSs normal customers to demand bespoke regions setup and turned on
edgarvaldes 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, I'm surprised no one else has commented on this. Some regulations require that at least some backups be located in the same country or region.
BurningFrog 22 minutes ago [-]
Closed-loop water cooling systems are common and use very little water, despite what you may hear from alarmists.
XorNot 25 minutes ago [-]
Sovereign data requirements for government and business.
watwut 4 hours ago [-]
Why would water for data center be an issue there? They dont need to drink it.
It was business for those contries. Just like finance, travel and wgat have you.
wiml 58 minutes ago [-]
Water is used for cooling. You take in liquid water, release water vapor, and the phase transition takes away a lot of heat. Otherwise you need to pump that heat into dry air, which is much more difficult (energy-expensive). It's the same thing you do when you sweat.
paxys 2 hours ago [-]
Because there are customers there
Fairburn 4 hours ago [-]
Once Iran ramps up, its going to be a free-for-all
against all US data infrastructure. Iran has friends in low places so they don't have to do all of the dirty work themselves. This should be a wake-up call.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2 hours ago [-]
It's extremely efficient from an evaporative cooling perspective.
r0yadar 8 minutes ago [-]
Does this count as offensive cyber?
amelius 30 minutes ago [-]
That's going to put more pressure on RAM chip availability.
dmix 3 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure this is old news being repackaged
bawolff 3 hours ago [-]
I do think there is some irony that the Iran war took down all the AWS datacenters in the middle east except the one (or 3 i guess) in Israel, which is still chugging along.
Like as a strategy its kind of weird. Iran plans to force Israel to stop by wrecking the economies of a bunch of countries that are basically frenemies of Israel? I suppose its meant to pressure USA, it just seems like a terrible strategy.
toyg 2 hours ago [-]
It's supposed to show to regional US allies that the American military cannot really protect them, pushing them to apply pressure to end the war in the short term, and to cool their relationship with the US and Israel in the long term.
It has had some effect; the emirates are desperate to find a way out of this conflict, and various figures have publicly said "the system of alliances [with the US] has worked but needs to be modernized" - i.e. we can't allow Americans to do what they want anymore.
geraneum 1 hours ago [-]
Do Americans do what they want because they are “allowed” by gulf states?
greggoB 1 hours ago [-]
It (normally) has an effect on the military calculus - e.g. if the US weren't allowed to have military bases in these countries, the possibility to take such action seems less plausible.
geraneum 38 minutes ago [-]
Correct, but that's not my point. My point is whether the Gulf States can realistically dictate what the US does. Perhaps they can affect US actions, but I doubt it's that cut and dried.
guerrilla 1 hours ago [-]
You need to think that all the way through. The answer is obviously yes. Yemen is a perfect example. Iran is obviously as well. Afghanistan another great case. It is certainly possible to resist US pressure. Iran is asking the gulf countries to do that. Imagine how much better they would all be able to resist the US together as well, better than each alone.
geraneum 45 minutes ago [-]
> The answer is obviously yes.
Of course it isn't. In reality, being able to resist requires power. Power that's gained more or less independently such as Iran's. Gulf states should be in a position of power to able to resist US presence. The power they have right now is mostly gained through the help of USA and its allies. It's not the same as Iran. Not even close.
guerrilla 42 minutes ago [-]
> Of course it isn't. In reality, being able to resist requires power.
I gave examples of it actually happening. If sandal-wearing Houthis can resist, then well-funded oil states can as well. The Taliban beat the US. In fact, very few people have failed at ejecting the US from the country when they tried if you think back. The US tends to lose a lot.
geraneum 8 minutes ago [-]
> I gave examples of it actually happening.
Ironically Yemen (Houthis) are fighting not only with US but against other gulf sates like Saudi Arabia as well. It's not really an example that demonstrates unity in gulf.
> The Taliban beat the US.
Taliban, brought to you by US of A to combat Soviet Union's influence! Well, it seems they are done beating US and are now busy beating Afghan women.
> The US tends to lose a lot.
Do they really? After the war is over and US is beat, how does the life of an average American compare to someone's from your list. It is the people of Middle East who pay the biggest price. That's the real loss.
*edit: typo
surgical_fire 28 seconds ago [-]
You are very wrong.
To keep a military base in a country you either need to be allowed to do so, or you have to do so by force, by occupying the country.
Occupation is doable, but very costly. The US did it recently in Afghanistan (which is barely a functioning country itself).
So yeah, it keeping military bases abroad via occupation is doable for some time, but not very feasible. It is more realistic to have a system of allied countries.
It's sort of a meme how people in the US imagine all middle eastern countries to be a bunch of mud huts in the world's largest gravel quarry.
hunterpayne 1 hours ago [-]
The gulf countries hate Iran and have for a very very long time, longer than even the concept of the west has existed. Iran throwing around ballistic missiles is far more like a temper tantrum than a viable military strategy. And its a strategic gift to Trump. Whether he/we can take advantage of that, IDK.
DANmode 38 minutes ago [-]
Who is “we”, just for reader clarity?
actionfromafar 22 minutes ago [-]
I guess US oil producers make a lot of money right now. I think those must be the "we make a lot of money" Trump refers to.
actionfromafar 41 minutes ago [-]
I'm not so sure it's a strategic gift for Trump. Before the war (oh, sorry, I meant the "special military operation") everything was largely fine for the Gulf states. Now, it's not.
40 minutes ago [-]
RobertoG 3 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
ceejayoz 2 hours ago [-]
It's not that they don't want to hit the ones in Israel, it's that they're better defended, and further away.
Bahrain to Iran is ~140 miles. Dubai is ~100 miles. Israel is closer to ~600.
bawolff 2 hours ago [-]
No doubt. But it still seems like a bizarre strategy. They can't shoot the people they want so they just shoot these other randoms.
"Videos verified by Storyful, which is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, indicate that at least some of the launches came from Bahrain, the tiny kingdom just 125 miles across the Gulf from Iran."
The air bases are still being used as launch pads for drone strikes and chopper missions.
ceejayoz 2 hours ago [-]
AWS isn't an "other random", it's a core piece of American infrastructure, and Bahrain hosts the US Fifth Fleet.
>"They can't shoot the people they want so they just shoot these other randoms."
Same as sanctions. There are many places where they can not tell governments what to do, so they suffocate general population
andrepd 2 hours ago [-]
These other "randoms" are US allies which host bases and equipment used to attack them.
In more practical terms, wrecking shit up in places like Dubai that made their name off air travel and attracting "expat" douchebags, is a very effective way to get them to pressure the US to stop the war. So is blowing up oil infra and stopping transit in Hormuz for allied nations.
megous 55 minutes ago [-]
NY Times doesn't even know what NATO is, while writing a full-page article about it, so yeah this kind of ignorance about where USA has it hands and guns is not surprising, from some random on the internet. ;)
XorNot 22 minutes ago [-]
Or Israel just has a very dense and effective air defense network, and the weapons didn't make it through?
Barrin92 1 hours ago [-]
it's a good strategy. There's no point in trying to stop Israel by harming them economically because they know perfectly well that like for them, this war is existential. The Gulf states are financial hubs and tourist destinations disguised as countries and so their wealth is a neuralgic point, the Gulf states and also by extension the US actually respond to having their economies wrecked.
mememememememo 57 minutes ago [-]
Iron dome.
AdrianB1 2 hours ago [-]
The data centers in Israel are protected by their AA systems that have more interceptors available than the Emirates. For weeks there are rumors about low stocks of interceptors in the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, while Israel manufactures their own while also getting more from US, so their stocks were probably way higher and replenishment better.
Also the Emirates are in range of short range cheapo drones and Iran build lot of these, while Israel is farther away.
surgical_fire 49 minutes ago [-]
> I do think there is some irony that the Iran war took down all the AWS datacenters in the middle east except the one (or 3 i guess) in Israel, which is still chugging along.
... For now.
> Like as a strategy its kind of weird. Iran plans to force Israel to stop by wrecking the economies of a bunch of countries that are basically frenemies of Israel? I suppose its meant to pressure USA, it just seems like a terrible strategy.
The gulf countries are enemies of Iran. In fact, they are a lot cozier to Israel.
So can Amazon file a claim with the Us government for compensation? Does their insurance cover this? Or do they just eat the loss?
lschueller 1 hours ago [-]
I am anything but a legal expert, but my guess would be that this falls under the aspects of force majeure. Which doesn't mean, that in a couple of years they try to take this to court.
cypherpunks01 1 hours ago [-]
US gov is not going to reimburse a private company for war damage caused by a sovereign country.
Property insurance generally has war exclusions, insurance co will deny claims. Unless there is some affordable magic 100% war damage coverage policy sold in the middle east, which is doubtful, no insurer would be able to successfully underwrite anything like that.
The company eats the losses and the recovery efforts it wants to persue.
lokinorkle 1 hours ago [-]
No, I’d say they’ll get it back with free Iranian oil in a few weeks.
DANmode 5 minutes ago [-]
Would you bet on it?
Rendered at 23:22:43 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
My pessimistic assumption is that Amazon said "yes" to handouts from regional government efforts to be relevant in tech, and that those data centers dont really matter to anyone but local politicians and monarchs who believe they have a seat at the table.
They have phones, computers, digital services just like the US and Europe. Makes sense they want a data center in the region, close to them just like the US and Europe have data enters close to their users.
I do not live in a binary world. I accept things in between.
Being part of group should be voluntary, not forced
What I definitely do not want is my life to be dictated by a few imbeciles at the top who are bought by large corps to pretend to be "by the people for the people".
Some people think it sufficient to pay no attention and let things slide indefinitely because "ultimately we can just rise up and shoot the government".
Such people have clogged toilets.
All that bicycles really need are a (much narrower) right of way and some cheap pavement. Maintenance can be done all at home, even in a small apartment. The apparent independence available to motor vehicle drivers is an illusion afforded by massive private and public investment.
What world-class city doesn't?
And if you think there aren't hookers in Dubai, then I don't know what to tell you.
This reminds me of a quote from "Stranger Than Fiction":
> Harold: "I don't want to eat nothing but pancakes, I want to live! I mean, who in their right mind in a choice between pancakes and living chooses pancakes?"
> Dr. Hilbert: "Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes"
I am surprised looking at this seemingly racist comment. Just because someone doesn't follow your tradition/culture doesn't mean they are living in the 12th century. There are people living everywhere in the world.
Dubai is in fact very developed, and there are not just camels living there - there are people, and many companies - albeit not so much primarily in the tech industry.
They do not have the tallest building in the world there worth $1.5 billion for no reason. They have tech needs like any other country and I hope that clears your confusion.
https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studie...
In those countries women are owned properties of their husbands, homosexuality is punishable by death and slavery is common.
But yeah, sure, they have a tall skyscraper so they are ok I guess.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51756984
They certainly may appear backwards from our western culture but that is only superficial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Iran
They are in a very unfortunate position.
Or are we not allowed to compare these things because of who the perpetrators are?
And, in the case of colonial crimes, don’t tell me to “let bygones be bygones” until apologies have been made and reparations disbursed.
In the meantime, the West is complicit and can instead direct their holier than thou attitude and patronizing lectures inwards.
Homosexuality is illegal there under the penalty of death.
Edit: Just as a side note, I saw western people bend over backwards to please people when I went to Japan. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy some treatment they get will be positive when you behave in such a way (like a guy bowing 5 times just for getting his photo taken, stuff that would never happen to anyone else) almost embarrassing really.
I did some work with hosts on GCP in the region and you get fun things like hosts in Israel has bad routes to customers in nearby countries and vice versa, though. I don't know if AWS has access to better routing. Definitely a case where physical distance doesn't really correspond with network distance.
Are you from another planet? They DO have a set at the table because gulf Sovereign Funds are one of the largest and most reliable LP pools available for VC funds for quite some time.
The current AI buildout is heavily dependent on Gulf money.
Oil is not forever and Sovereign Wealth Funds usually have goals that are not simply acruing direct investment returns, it makes sense that the folks deploying 100 billions tranches will have some say on where to put all those H100 their money will buy.
Nobody sane would predict Israel and the US would start this war.
Israel predicted and started the war unless you consider they're insane [1].
[1] Iran is a distraction [video]:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47640560
Technically, I can see challenges in power and cooling, but those can be overcome. The real question is- Are there enough customers in the region to support local data centers? I think that’s clearly yes.
1) Internal risks and controls within the datacenter (the company involved and their operating history, fires, flood, etc,) -- for a sufficiently "good" datacenter, you can assume it gets maxed out in quality, or at least to the point where it's no longer efficient to spend more. Most of these risks also cause service disruptions, so if you're building for high availability anyway, the rest of this stuff is usually handled as part of that. Essentially, if you're too cheap to build a good enough datacenter to max this out, you're not getting insurance anyway in most cases, so it's not a variable factor so bunch as binary or maybe a few broad risk bands (ISO tier for datacenters).
2) External risks. This is mostly natural catastrophe ("nat cat" or "cat risk"); usually there's one dominant driver of that ("severe convective storms" in Texas; floods and hurricanes in places like Florida; earthquakes in California). In some places it's multiple risks (Japan has both earthquake/tsunami and typhoon). This drives the majority of insurance premium.
War risk, geopolitical, political risk, terrorism, SRCC ("strikes, riots, and civil commotion") are in a third category -- often essentially not a factor (e.g. for a $200mm facility in rural Texas), but often handled through special programs at a national level or specialty insurance. A lot of normal policies exclude or let the client buy-back that part of the risk.
As my personal interests in war zones, drones, etc. and professional interests in crypto, AI, and datacenters seem to have converged, looking forward to seeing "quality of air defense artillery/integrated air defense system" as well as "comprehensive quick reaction force capable of dealing with national-level threats" as elements of insurance underwriting for $50B AI datacenters/"AI factories" in the future. I assume in most cases this kind of stuff will be handled by national, military, defense, or civil defense parts of the government, but could easily be contracted as well. I don't think Oracle Cloud is likely to stand up their own private army though.
I also agree with the sibling comment that suggests even if there were outsourced options available, hyperscalers might do better to self-insure.
But regardless whether the company eats it, or pays it through insurance premiums, I'm still curious how this type of risk is planned for (to whatever degree it is) and accounted. I assume it must have been contemplated in a deliberate manner, somewhere on a scale of "We knew this could happen, considered x, y and z, decided the venture was justified, and here's how we planned for such a contingency" to "That was dumb siting and someone will be fired". Obviously anywhere you put a building entails some level of local risk.
As years as a volunteer firefighter we do a lot of risk management at the tactical level and have to think through assessment and potential consequences. There are lots of guidelines we learn to help produce sound decisions. But at the end of the day to apply them you may need to make a judgement call, and you need to be prepared for things to go wrong. In a way I guess I'm asking about the economic and operational equivalent at the scale of hundred-million dollar data centers.
https://xkcd.com/1737/
Ps. Like the original commenter said, I'm in no way meaning to be insensitive to the larger human and regional consequences.
As long as sun and wind aren’t the main energy sources there, it might be economical but I wouldn’t exactly call it reasonable.
Edge compute. Data (coughlaugh) residency. Obsession with low latency on our 42Mb web pages.
It was business for those contries. Just like finance, travel and wgat have you.
Like as a strategy its kind of weird. Iran plans to force Israel to stop by wrecking the economies of a bunch of countries that are basically frenemies of Israel? I suppose its meant to pressure USA, it just seems like a terrible strategy.
It has had some effect; the emirates are desperate to find a way out of this conflict, and various figures have publicly said "the system of alliances [with the US] has worked but needs to be modernized" - i.e. we can't allow Americans to do what they want anymore.
Of course it isn't. In reality, being able to resist requires power. Power that's gained more or less independently such as Iran's. Gulf states should be in a position of power to able to resist US presence. The power they have right now is mostly gained through the help of USA and its allies. It's not the same as Iran. Not even close.
I gave examples of it actually happening. If sandal-wearing Houthis can resist, then well-funded oil states can as well. The Taliban beat the US. In fact, very few people have failed at ejecting the US from the country when they tried if you think back. The US tends to lose a lot.
Ironically Yemen (Houthis) are fighting not only with US but against other gulf sates like Saudi Arabia as well. It's not really an example that demonstrates unity in gulf.
> The Taliban beat the US.
Taliban, brought to you by US of A to combat Soviet Union's influence! Well, it seems they are done beating US and are now busy beating Afghan women.
> The US tends to lose a lot.
Do they really? After the war is over and US is beat, how does the life of an average American compare to someone's from your list. It is the people of Middle East who pay the biggest price. That's the real loss.
*edit: typo
To keep a military base in a country you either need to be allowed to do so, or you have to do so by force, by occupying the country.
Occupation is doable, but very costly. The US did it recently in Afghanistan (which is barely a functioning country itself).
So yeah, it keeping military bases abroad via occupation is doable for some time, but not very feasible. It is more realistic to have a system of allied countries.
It's sort of a meme how people in the US imagine all middle eastern countries to be a bunch of mud huts in the world's largest gravel quarry.
Bahrain to Iran is ~140 miles. Dubai is ~100 miles. Israel is closer to ~600.
"Videos verified by Storyful, which is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, indicate that at least some of the launches came from Bahrain, the tiny kingdom just 125 miles across the Gulf from Iran."
The air bases are still being used as launch pads for drone strikes and chopper missions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Support_Activity_Bahrain
Same for Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, etc.; all host US bases. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-military-facili...
Same as sanctions. There are many places where they can not tell governments what to do, so they suffocate general population
In more practical terms, wrecking shit up in places like Dubai that made their name off air travel and attracting "expat" douchebags, is a very effective way to get them to pressure the US to stop the war. So is blowing up oil infra and stopping transit in Hormuz for allied nations.
Also the Emirates are in range of short range cheapo drones and Iran build lot of these, while Israel is farther away.
... For now.
> Like as a strategy its kind of weird. Iran plans to force Israel to stop by wrecking the economies of a bunch of countries that are basically frenemies of Israel? I suppose its meant to pressure USA, it just seems like a terrible strategy.
The gulf countries are enemies of Iran. In fact, they are a lot cozier to Israel.
Property insurance generally has war exclusions, insurance co will deny claims. Unless there is some affordable magic 100% war damage coverage policy sold in the middle east, which is doubtful, no insurer would be able to successfully underwrite anything like that.
The company eats the losses and the recovery efforts it wants to persue.