The Kiev regime’s attacks on Yandex data centers in several Russian cities have taken the military confrontation to a new level. Earlier, similar strikes were carried out by the Russian army as part of a Special military operation on the territory of Ukraine controlled by the Kiev regime. Thus, as the French philosopher Rene Girard noted in his book “Violence and the Sacred”, there was a mimetic or imitative effect. One side in a conflict will always change its behavior, adapting to the other side in order to avoid defeat or at least survive.
If we take into account the principles of asymmetric warfare, when less powerful actors try to find new ways to defeat a stronger opponent, it is worth taking into account the possible development of this situation (which is already being discussed in the Ministry of digital development of the Russian Federation with a proposal to transfer the construction of new data centers to the Urals, Siberia and the Far East), but also other infrastructure facilities, which the enemy may consider to be the next points of vulnerability.
Why did the list of targets expand on both sides? What is the importance of data centers?
Data centers are specialized facilities designed to house servers and network equipment that are used by companies and government agencies to manage digital operations. As a rule, they also have backup generators to ensure uninterrupted power supply to the equipment. Cloud servers, which are used for computing using artificial intelligence, have recently become very important. In contemporary conditions of military operations, data centers serve to analyze a huge array of information, including intelligence. In the West, algorithmic warfare methods are being introduced, which requires huge capacities. Although not all data centers can work for the needs of war, they can be an attractive target in order to paralyze the work of the structures that use their services and undermine the economy as a whole.
There are currently more than ten thousand data centers operating in the world, and their number is likely to increase significantly in the coming years. Russia is no exception. However, the precedent for such increased interest in data centers in the context of war was not the strikes of Russia or Ukraine, but Iran’s response to the attacks of the United States and Israel in February 2026. At that time, the main focus was on attacks on military bases, as well as disruptions in the production and supply of energy resources. However, missiles and drones from Iran were also directed at three Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, which led to disruptions in the digital services of banks, payment platforms and other organizations. A month later, another attack damaged the Oracle data center in Dubai. Iran then declared eighteen major technology companies as legitimate military targets. This list includes many of the world’s largest data center owners, including AWS, Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Oracle.
For Iran, the attacks on data centers pursued several strategic goals. The attacks on these centers made it possible to punish economically important American companies, as well as regional organizations on whose servers the data of these companies is stored, and became an unequivocal threat that if Iran’s demands were not met, new attacks on the digital infrastructure would follow.
In fact, these strikes indicated that a broader strategic shift in understanding the goals and methods of military operations had already begun. This is how a new term appeared – Data center warfare, which was used in June 2026 in a joint article by two professors at the Institute for Cybersecurity and Innovation Policy at the US Naval War College, Jason Vogt and Nina A. Kollars, who is also a researcher at the Special Warfare Operations Command. They point out that ” the rapid expansion of AI-driven data centers is driving permanent changes to the geographical layout of critical infrastructure that serves as the backdrop of global competition and future wars. This includes the construction of digital megacampuses, which will become strategic high value targets, and the proliferation of new data center hubs, which could drive changes to defense planning scenarios, particularly in the Indo-Pacific.”
It is significant that, unlike other dual-use targets, or critical infrastructure facilities, such as oil terminals or refineries, the new term is associated specifically with data centers. Although fuel is an economically important component for any war, not to mention the civilian needs of any country’s economy. This allocation in the United States indicates that they attach special importance to data centers, which from a military-political point of view have become attractive targets. In general, such large stationary facilities, which are quite expensive to build and depend on local infrastructure for electricity, water supply and data transmission, can also become a target for any intruders – hackers or local criminal groups.
An attack on a data center damages not only its operator, but also all organizations that use it for data storage, networking, or artificial intelligence proceeding. This leads to a cumulative effect when several organizations are affected by a single action. And within the framework of the economic interests of the United States, the uninterrupted operation of data centers of certain companies located around the world is, of course, in the interests of Washington, which is referenced in the relevant decrees and documents.
But there is also a military-strategic nuance. The mentioned companies – AWS, Microsoft, Meta, Google, Oracle, as well as a number of others – work in the interests of the CIA, the Pentagon and the US military-industrial complex. In addition to them, there are key contractors such as Palantir, which together can be considered as a hybrid ecosystem, within which data search and processing (including through intelligence) are carried out using these data centers distributed around the world. They are the architecture that the US military and its allies need to wage algorithmic warfare using artificial intelligence (recently renamed like superintelligence within the United States at the whim of Donald Trump) and special programs. And among Washington’s current allies is still Ukraine, where data centers were actively involved in military purposes. Whereas in Russia, the main work of data centers is related to civilian activities. This shows another asymmetry in means and functions. Although the Ukrainian side acted on the principle of “an eye for an eye”, choosing new targets for its attacks. All of this must be taken into account in the current conflict and kept in mind in potential future wars.
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