Inside China Business | September 16, 2026

“Compute Diplomacy” was a US strategy to dislodge Chinese companies in the Middle East, and compel cooperation with Silicon Valley AI developers. Bahrain and the UAE hosted large Amazon Web Services data centers, and planned a $30 billion, 5-GW Stargate project. But Iran targeted AWS facilities in the earliest days of the war, knocking them offline for months. Cloud Services is Amazon’s primary profit driver, and is a “dual-use” company that serves a wide range of military and commercial clients. The Stargate project in the UAE is now under review, as the managers wrestle with how to protect the facilities from attack by drones and missiles. China’s “Token Outbound” economy is ramping up, and is ironically in the best position of all to benefit from Iran’s attacks on data centers in the Gulf. Closing scene, Zhejiang, near Wenzho.

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Via https://alethonews.com/2026/09/16/iran-spent-1-million-to-wipe-out-30-billion-in-data-center-plans-and-take-down-amazon-in-the-me/