Amazon Calls It "Objects." Reuters Calls It Iran.

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Hello, Curse and Coffee friends,

Today, we look at the AWS outage in the UAE.

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The take: The first major cloud provider to catch fire from what was almost certainly a missile or drone just repriced every cloud investment in the Gulf.

What happened: Amazon Web Services (AWS) shut its UAE data centre on Sunday after "objects" struck the facility and started a fire (during Iran's retaliatory missile barrage across the Gulf).

Why it matters: Microsoft has $15.2 billion committed to UAE data centres through 2029, and every expansion plan in the region just picked up a risk premium that didn't exist on Friday.

What to watch: Whether insurers reprice Gulf data centre coverage this week, and whether the Strait of Hormuz reopens before Monday's open.

AWS described the incident as a "localised power issue." The Burj Al Arab was also on fire.

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A cloud contract includes an SLA (service-level agreement).

AWS guarantees 99.99% uptime for its main cloud computing service. Fall below that, and customers get credits. The fine print covers kit failure, bad code, storms, and blackouts.

It does not cover war.

Most cloud SLAs include a force majeure clause — events beyond the provider's control.

Military action fits comfortably under that umbrella. So when a missile fragment or drone hits your availability zone (a cluster of connected data centres), your provider owes you nothing.

The Gulf cloud thesis just cracked.

Data centre coverage in the UAE was priced like Frankfurt or Singapore (stable, boring). That ended Saturday morning.

AWS will rebuild one availability zone.

The bigger problem lands on Friday, when Lloyd's and Swiss Re decide what Gulf data centre insurance costs now.

If premiums double, the cost advantage that made the UAE attractive evaporates. Higher premiums mean higher cloud bills.

You'll see it in your next SaaS invoice. Cloud providers stress-tested for floods, power cuts, and cyberattacks (not war).

Pro: Gulf data centres serve a real need — low-latency cloud for billions of users across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Relocating that infrastructure would cost more than hardening it.

Con: If your availability zone can be hit by a drone, "high availability" means something different than the contract says.

Our read: The infrastructure need is real, but the risk model just broke. Whoever foots the bill — customers, insurers, or governments — decides if the Gulf stays a cloud hub or becomes a warning.

AWS Compute Service Level Agreement — Scroll to the exclusions. Right there in black and white: uptime guarantees don't apply to "any force majeure event." That's the clause doing the work when a drone hits the building, and your cloud provider owes you nothing.

165 missiles. 541 drones. One "localised power issue." (UAE Ministry of Defence / Reuters)

Brent surges 13% as Strait of Hormuz effectively shuts — Analysts warn triple-digit oil if the closure holds. Monday opens hot. [Analysis]

UAE diplomat tells Iran: "Your war is not with your neighbours" — Gargash says Tehran crossed a red line and isolated itself. Sharpest Gulf response yet. [Report]

Kpler: How the Hormuz crisis reshapes global oil flows — Brent expected to open Monday at $85–90. Russia quietly wins. [Analysis]

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