In March, Iran struck AWS data centers and associated infrastructure located in the UAE. The following month, another facility owned by Amazon was also targeted in Bahrain. The IRGC has repeatedly indicated that it considers such facilities as legitimate targets because those commercial facilities facilitate American military operations.
These and other incidents have prompted Kate Monroe, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, to urge Congress to create a framework through which digital infrastructure that is critical to American defense, business and other purposes can be identified and given protection whether those facilities are on U.S. soil or abroad.
Monroe argues that the protection doesn’t have to elevate the designation of those facilities as U.S. territories in the same way that embassies and military bases are regarded. Instead, she says a system needs to be created to designate carefully selected facilities as critical to American interests and a hierarchy of defensive actions should exist to deter any adversary that may be considering targeting those facilities.
She cites the example of a data center and its associated infrastructure upon which financial markets rely. When such a data center is targeted, the financial system of the country could be disrupted at great economic cost.
Retaliatory measures that may not include a military confrontation can be undertaken in case such a critical facility is compromised by an adversary. According to Monroe, the time has come to revisit how national security is protected beyond defending national borders and locations housing military bases and embassies abroad.
Monroe stresses that for any digital infrastructure to be designated as critical to American security, it must meet stringent criteria set by Congress. That facility will then be expected to adhere to similarly stringent standards or responsibilities in order to retain its designation as critical digital infrastructure. The owners of those facilities will therefore not simply enjoy the benefits of U.S. protection; they will also carry a responsibility to justify the protection accorded to them.
The retired Marine Corps officer suggests that the U.S. could create reciprocal relationships with its allies so that each other’s key digital systems and infrastructure can be protected in a mutually beneficial way.
She says the time has come for strategy on national security to evolve in light of the current realities in which technological transformations mean the military and economy heavily rely on digital systems to run smoothly. While data center buildings could be owned privately, their destruction can easily have effects that stretch beyond the companies using those buildings.
It would be interesting to hear what AI hyperscalers like Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META) think is the best way to protect American digital infrastructure locally and abroad from being targeted by adversaries.
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