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Data gotten and examined by "Arabi Post" on the map of cloud service centers and areas (information centers) in the Middle East and North Africa revealed that the area's countries rely greatly on American companies for cloud services. The data reveals the presence of around 31 American centers, the majority of them in Gulf countries, while the number of centers owned by Chinese companies reached about 7.

In the Gulf nations, more than 53% of the cloud infrastructure tracked there is American. Source: "Arabi Post" database of cloud service centers in the Middle East and North Africa (89 centers).

Within a few years, cloud service centers have actually moved from a "technical alternative" for decreasing server expenses into vital facilities for the state and the economy: e-government websites, payment and banking systems, health and education platforms, and the operation of big information, expert system, and more. The recent Iran war (2026) revealed a new measurement: the cloud itself can be directly and physically targeted, as taken place when Iranian drone strikes harmed Amazon AWS cloud service information centers in the UAE and Bahrain, causing interruptions and service blackouts.

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However the significance of American and foreign business does not stop at technical competition or service quality; it reaches digital sovereignty and concerns of control over data for these countries and their various delicate sectors. American business are subject to U.S. laws controling lawful access to information, such as the CLOUD Act, raising questions about the limitations of judicial demands for information even when it is stored outside the United States.

"CLOUD Act" (March 2018): Area 2713 clearly obliges communications and calculating service companies to maintain and reveal subscriber information within their "possession, custody, or control, regardless of whether it lies within or outside the United States" validating the point above. (Click an image to see it complete size.) This reliance also converges with the context of cross-border intelligence event under structures such as FISA Area 702, as presented by U.S

At the same time, professionals contacted by "Arabi Post" caution of the dangers of concentrating contracts with American cloud company, and of the effect of "foreign jurisdiction" on personal privacy and security. In between issues over sovereignty and the marketplace's need for ready-made infrastructure, the importance of information localization policies and the limitations of cross-border data flows is growing, as gone over in global reports such as those by the OECD.

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people or homeowners who engage with individuals or organizations in those countries where data centers run by American business store the data of those countries and their residents. To comprehend the scope of this risk, it is necessary to first examine U.S. federal laws such as FISA Section 702 and the CLOUD Act, which governs U.S.

Although the CLOUD Act grants Washington broad authority to access data saved in data centersthe large-scale facilities utilized by business to shop and process informationin some cases, under the Act, U.S. authorities may be needed to notify the federal government of the country worried that there is a legal basis engaging access to that data.

The U.S. federal government could likewise penalize or target any U.S. resident who takes part in monetary transactions with that country or sends cash transfers to individuals there. Abu Al-Saad likewise states that if a dispute were to happen between that nation and Washington, the United States might suspend its information storage services for that nation and validate doing so.

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This would affect all sectors, consisting of monetary and banking services. In the context of the security threats linked to countries' reliance on American data centers, another point also emergesone that Ibtihal Abu Al-Saad considers the most important and most unsafe: the U.S. legal and intelligence tool called "National Security Letters" (NSLs).

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federal intelligence and security firms. Under these letters, U.S. authorities have the capability to compel significant innovation companies to hand over delicate data related to citizens or countries. Washington could, for instance, force Amazon to open data records belonging to users in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, or in other places, while "imposing a rigorous nondisclosure order that avoids the innovation company from alerting the Bahraini federal government or the targeted individuals that this access has occurred.