On March 6, unmanned aerial attacks struck Amazon Web Services facility sites in Abu Dhabi and Manama, causing physical damage to server racks and power infrastructure. AWS engineers are assessing restoration timelines, though initial reports suggest localized outages affected customers using compute and storage services in the Middle East.

Washington is drafting a policy to regulate shipments of high-performance AI accelerators such as those from Nvidia and AMD. Under the plan, exports of 200,000 chips or more would require recipients to invest in U.S.-based AI data centers or provide government-level security guarantees, while smaller shipments may face licensing, usage monitoring and software restrictions.

The combination of regional infrastructure risks and looming chip export controls could slow AWS’s international expansion and raise costs for AI workloads. The news contributed to a broader technology sell-off, with major semiconductor indices down over 2% and the Nasdaq Composite nearly 2% lower midday.