Amazon loses $150M after drones hit its data centers — and insurance won’t cover their losses. What it means for you

Last month, drone strikes linked to Iran hit Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, disrupting cloud services for weeks and forcing Amazon to issue customer credits that reportedly cost the company about $150 million, according to Forbes (1).

But the financial hit wasn’t just about downtime. It exposed a bigger issue: insurance didn’t cover the damage.

“Typically, a policy excludes war. So if it’s an active war, it’s not gonna be covered,” Tom Harper, a data center insurance specialist at Gallagher, told Forbes (1).

That detail may sound like a niche corporate problem. It’s not.

The AWS facilities weren’t random targets. As geopolitical tensions escalate, data centers — the backbone of cloud computing, AI and digital services — are increasingly viewed as strategic infrastructure. They underpin communications, logistics, payments and military planning, Forbes stated (1).

In other words, these…