The Real Lessons of Iran's Attacks on AWS Data Centers

The Real Lessons of Iran's Attacks on AWS Data Centers

1. The Middle East is fundamentally unstable. The entire region is bedeviled by historic conflicts based on religious divisions (Shiite, Sunni, Christian, and Jewish), distrust between Europe and Islam going back to the Crusades and the Ottoman Empire, a lack of strong independent institutions, weak rule of law, lack of democratically legitimate governments, and limited acceptance of the notion of secularism (the idea that religion and government should be strictly separate to maximize freedom and ensure equal treatment). Even the so-called benevolent monarchies that border the Persian Gulf have absolute power and absolute power always corrupts in the end. Monarchies are outdated institutions. Don't imagine or suggest otherwise.

Recent governments in the region have promised stability and peace, but extremism abounds. Israel's ethnic cleansing in Gaza, Afghanistan's repression of women, Trump's foolish acts of aggression, state assassination of journalists, and Iran's theocratic rule and financing of terrorism are just recent examples. Yemen is not even a country right now. It is a collection of warring tribes. The so-called legitimate Yemen government has not faced an election since 2004. So where's the legitimacy?

2. Network Lessons

A. Anyone operating a network in this region needs resiliency raised to the nth power. The path of least resistance has always been subsea cables in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea. As recent events have amply demonstrated, it is not enough. The region needs secure, high capacity terrestrial links between Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the Emirates. Some networks do exist such as AMEER2, but a lot more routing and capacity is required to ensure the region's future.

It is very likely that regional governments and companies kept almost all their data in American Tech Giant Cloud facilities. Never rely solely on the Cloud. There is no guarantee in standard public cloud contracts that a customer's data is stored at multiple, physically diverse sites. For example, when one of OVH's Strasbourg data centers burned to the ground a few year ago, hundreds of their clients lost all their data and software applications. There was no data backup despite the corporate siren song of resiliency. Governments and companies should have their own infrastructure as well as relying on Cloud solutions. Owned infrastructure at scale is cost effective. If it is well designed, it almost always outperforms public clouds by a wide margin.

Any business or government or nonprofit should have its data and computing power widely distributed across the region and outside the region as well. Relying on vague promises that the Cloud is always there is a huge mistake. Indeed, given the perennial conflicts in the region, bunker type data centers are a good idea. As well as data recovery sites in Europe where strong data protection exists.

Photo Showing Amazon's Damaged Middle Eastern Data Centres


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The British Empire's Resilient Subsea Telegraph Network

Image
The British empire had largely completed its Red Line cable network by 1902. This network allowed news and messages to be delivered in a few minutes or several hours at most depending on the message queue's length. It spanned the globe and formed a network ring so traffic could be routed in the opposite direction in case of disruption. It was, as Dr. Michael Delaunay has argued, a highly resilient network. Besides the ring configuration, the network relied on multiple cables between any pair of given end points to ensure uptime. The British military believed it would be impossible for an enemy to cut enough cables on any route to sever all communications between any given pair of end points. The Committee of Imperial Defense concluded that 57 cables must be shut down to isolate the British Isles from the Red Line network. The figure was 15 for Canada and 7 for South Africa. The Empire was self sufficient in terms of manufacturing the components for a subsea telegraph cable and re...
Read more

The Short Life Expectancy of Starlink's LEO Satellites

Image
According to FCC filings Starlink shut down almost 500 Starlink satellites during the first half of 2025. The company had them reenter the atmosphere where they burned up. What is striking is that these satellites were all less than 5 years old. The general consensus is that LEOs have a life expectancy ranging from 5 to 8 years. Shorter than expected life spans for the satellites will hit Starlink's income statement hard by increasing network depreciation and replacement needs. However, Starlink has managed to lower its LEO's manufacturing costs down to $500K versus initial figures around $1 million. So these production economies of scale might offset some of the higher than expected depreciation. However, there are also rocket launch costs as well. It costs Starlink about $3 million to put a satellite into orbit. The Falcon 9 costs $67 million per flight and delivers 23 LEOs into low Earth orbit. As a private company Starlink financials are a bit of mystery. The company press ...
Read more

Here We Go Again: Several Major Cables Down Off Yemen

Image
Three industry insiders have confirmed the 'epicenter' of the outages is in Yemen coastal waters at a depth of only one 100 meters. This strongly suggests fishing or more likely an anchor is responsible. Multiple sources have told me that neither Egyptian or Saudi Internet services has been degraded, but the Persian Gulf has been hit hard as well as Pakistan. This is consistent with the epicenter being off Yemen. It is also consistent with the cables reported down below. Four Cables Definitely Down: 1. EIG. 2. SWM4. 3. IMEWE. 4. Falcon Lower left map is SMW4. Center is EIG. Far right is IMEWE. Total capacity of these four cables is approximately 44 Tbps. Pakistan is heavily dependent on SWM4, EIG, and IMEWE. Scattered reports initially suggest AAE1 may also be down. But it is not.
Read more