Recent Iranian strikes on Gulf data centers expose critical vulnerabilities in foreign-hosted American digital infrastructure, demanding urgent defense reform.
For most of American history, national defense has been understood geographically. There was American territory and foreign territory, borders to defend, military installations to protect and American forces stationed around the world. Even as warfare evolved, the basic concept remained relatively simple: the United States had physical assets that needed protection from foreign adversaries.
Technology has fundamentally changed that calculation. Today, some of the most important assets supporting America's economy, military and national security do not fit neatly within traditional definitions of territory or defense infrastructure. They are data centers, cloud-computing systems, telecommunications networks and other digital infrastructure that may be privately owned and located thousands of miles from the United States.