In retaliation for the ongoing U.S.–Israeli war, Iran responded with a novel form of counterattack. For the first time in military history, private sector data centers came under deliberate attack.
In an era when companies known for e-commerce, social networks, and search engines have also become close collaborators with militaries, is bombing their servers fair game?
Three days after the U.S. and Israel began their joint bombardment, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched kamikaze drone strikes against Amazon-owned data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain that provide an array of cloud computing services to customers throughout the Middle East. The impacts and subsequent fires “caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage,” according to Amazon, resulting in service outages across the region.
The motive behind the attack, according to Iranian state television, was not to block people from ordering groceries or posting to social media, but rather to highlight “the role of these centers in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities.
Civilians and their property have been targets in war for centuries if not millennia. This is nothing new, and it’s absolutely a valid way to end a war against a nation that is even marginally democratic.
If the people electing the leaders don’t support the war, then, in theory, the war will end.
It worked for Vietnam. There was finally enough pushback from the people that not only did the US pull it’s troops, but there was an anti war sentiment across the entire nation for at least a decade beyond it.
This is why there’s so much propaganda against our “enemies” these days, to ensure that the people keep seeing them as enemies and not as people.
Targeting civilians can get them to support the war a lot more because fuck that guy bombing us.
Targeting corporate assets, especially if the people generally dislike the corporations? That is far more interesting. I don’t know if there are many good examples of that. I suspect you may see an increasing hatred towards government and corporations from the people while corporations will lobby governments to do more to defend their things.
Except they’re not civilians or civilian infrastructure if they are providing munitions to the military
Who do think works at munitions factories, and shipyards, and aircraft manufacturing plants if not civilians?
Those aren’t civilians. Those are people who work for the military.
If you work for the military, you are not a civilian