The UAE is redrawing its plans for a five-gigawatt artificial intelligence (AI) data center project, one of the largest anywhere outside the US, after Iranian retaliatory strikes on infrastructure across the Gulf forced the Emirates to rethink how and where critical facilities are built, Reuters reported on Friday.
Speaking in anonymity, six people familiar with the matter told Reuters that Emirati authorities began reassessing where and how sensitive facilities should be built once the war reached the Gulf.
Four of those sources said the campus, first designed as a single 26-square-kilometer site in Abu Dhabi, is now expected to take shape as several data centers distributed across the country.
Authorities are weighing ways to shield the facilities from drone and missile strikes, the sources said, including installing air defenses and putting some of the centers underground.
Sources also said interceptors and electronic jamming equipment are being written into the redesign, with blast-resistant concrete and additional backup power and cooling systems also under consideration, and with the most sensitive material, including military data, possibly housed inside mountains.
Iran began striking Gulf states hosting US forces with missiles and dr
