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Information acquired and analyzed by "Arabi Post" on the map of cloud service centers and areas (data centers) in the Middle East and North Africa exposed that the area's nations rely heavily on American companies for cloud services. The information shows the presence of around 31 American centers, many of them in Gulf countries, while the number of centers owned by Chinese business reached about 7.

In the Gulf nations, more than 53% of the cloud infrastructure tracked there is American. Source: "Arabi Post" database of cloud service centers in the Middle East and North Africa (89 centers).

Within a couple of years, cloud service centers have actually moved from a "technical alternative" for lowering server expenses into critical facilities for the state and the economy: e-government portals, payment and banking systems, health and education platforms, and the operation of big information, expert system, and more. However the current Iran war (2026) exposed a brand-new dimension: the cloud itself can be straight and physically targeted, as taken place when Iranian drone strikes damaged Amazon AWS cloud service data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, triggering disruptions and service failures.

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The significance of American and foreign companies does not stop at technical competition or service quality; it extends to digital sovereignty and concerns of control over data for these countries and their numerous sensitive sectors. American business are subject to U.S. laws controling lawful access to information, such as the CLOUD Act, raising questions about the limits of judicial requests for information even when it is stored outside the United States.

"CLOUD Act" (March 2018): Area 2713 clearly forces interactions and calculating service providers to protect and disclose subscriber information within their "possession, custody, or control, regardless of whether it is situated within or outside the United States" verifying the point above., as provided by U.S

At the same time, specialists contacted by "Arabi Post" warn of the threats of concentrating agreements with American cloud service suppliers, and of the effect of "foreign jurisdiction" on privacy and security.

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residents or citizens who connect with individuals or organizations in those nations where information centers operated by American companies save the information of those nations and their people. To understand the scope of this threat, it is essential to initially analyze U.S. federal laws such as FISA Section 702 and the CLOUD Act, which governs U.S.

Although the CLOUD Act grants Washington broad authority to gain access to data saved in information centersthe massive infrastructure used by companies to store and process informationin some cases, under the Act, U.S. authorities might be needed to alert the federal government of the nation worried that there is a legal basis compelling access to that information.

The U.S. federal government might likewise penalize or target any U.S. resident who participates in financial transactions with that country or sends money transfers to people there. Abu Al-Saad likewise states that if a conflict were to take place in between that nation and Washington, the United States could suspend its information storage services for that country and justify doing so.

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This would impact all sectors, consisting of monetary and banking services. In the context of the security dangers linked to nations' dependence on American data centers, another point likewise emergesone that Ibtihal Abu Al-Saad considers the most crucial and most harmful: the U.S. legal and intelligence tool referred to as "National Security Letters" (NSLs).

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federal intelligence and security firms. Under these letters, U.S. authorities have the capability to force major technology business to turn over delicate information associated with citizens or countries. Washington could, for example, force Amazon to open data records belonging to users in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, or in other places, while "enforcing a rigorous nondisclosure order that prevents the innovation company from alerting the Bahraini government or the targeted people that this access has actually occurred.