The AI boom created a colossal market for compute—GPUs, networking gear and the massive datacenters that run it all. It also bolstered a second less celebrated market: protecting those facilities and the crown-jewel chips inside from threats.

On top of rising anti-data center sentiment stateside, the war in Iran has turned that problem into a line item. “Data centers are secondary targets right after obvious military sites,” says Matt McCrann, former executive at drone defense company DroneShield, who has worked with data centers in the U.S. and Middle East.

That shift matters because the AI data centers being built these days aren’t just expensive—they’re also possible strategic infrastructure during times of war. Enemies don’t need to hit a military site to degrade an opponent’s capability; they can hit compute that potentially underpins communications, logistics, payments and even military planning.

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