Commentary: Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian data centres may change how we see disinformation

DATA IN THE LINE OF FIRE

Data centres are an unconventional military target. However, that may be changing as their importance grows. Attacking data centres may disrupt an enemy’s military operations, as well as the ordinary civilian services that rely on these facilities. In Russia, these disruptions may slow down the economy in the long term, undermining its ability to continue war.

Ukraine’s strikes came after Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centres and internet service providers. They also follow a precedent set by Iran earlier this year when it hit data centres in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in response to American attacks.

The Middle East data centres were run by Amazon Web Services, the world’s biggest cloud computing company with facilities around the globe.
Typically, data centres use redundancy and backups to make sure losing a single facility does not have permanent negative consequences. Even so, the Iranian strikes resulted in long-term degradation of services and irrecoverable loss of some data.

Russian data centres may have less in the way of international redundancy options. This is due to a particular vision of “digital sovereignty”, which Moscow has actively championed over the past decade.

The idea that nations should have autonomy and control over their own digital data and infrastructures is a sound one. However, Russia’s pursuit of “sovereignty” has enabled it to censor online information and isolate Russian users from global internet services.

Russia passed laws requiring certain data to be stored locally in 2015. These were followed by international sanctions after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As a result, Russia’s options for maintaining backup infrastructure abroad have been significantly limited.