Last week, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps posted a video. It showed satellite imagery of OpenAI's Stargate data center under construction in Abu Dhabi. Then came the threat: 'complete and utter annihilation' if the US attacks Iranian power plants.
The video arrived after President Trump warned of 'Power Plant Day' and said the US would 'blow up the entire country' unless Iran opens the Strait of Hormuz and reaches a deal. The Stargate facility is a $500 billion joint venture with Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco, and SoftBank. It's being built with G42, an Abu Dhabi AI firm chaired by the UAE's National Security Advisor. Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in G42 last year after the company agreed to dump Chinese hardware and align with US interests. Internal dysfunction at Microsoft previously jeopardized the OpenAI deal, raising concerns about the stability of these critical partnerships.
The IRGC video has an embarrassing mistake. It misidentifies Cisco Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella while showing executives who back the project. But the flub points to something real. AI infrastructure has become a military-adjacent target in ways most tech companies haven't fully grappled with.
Iran has made its position clear. If tensions with the US escalate, American tech infrastructure in the Gulf will be fair game.