UAE minister calls datacenters ‘more important than roads’, unveils new ‘hiding rule’

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The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will overhaul its regulatory framework for data centres and halt public disclosure of their physical locations to shield them from military threats, according to comments reported by The Next Web of a session from Salesforce's annual event Dreamforce 2026.

Speaking alongside Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, Omar Sultan Al Olama, the UAE’s Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications, warned that computing hubs have evolved into critical infrastructure that requires heightened protection.Al Olama said that data centres have become prime targets because our whole lives exist on connected devices, arguing that they are now more important than bridges, roads, or tunnels.

In remarks highlighted in the 'The Next Web' report, the minister stated that the UAE will no longer promote the locations of these facilities to prevent bad actors from targeting them, adding that he expects other nations will soon be forced to adopt similar measures.

"Unfortunately they’re more important than bridges. They’re more important than roads. They’re more important than tunnels because our whole lives are on these devices that we’re using," said Al Olama, in a session Salesforce published.

Incidentally, UAE minister's views are very different from that of most Americans. While Donald Trump government strongly supports data centres, most states across the US are not in strong favour of them. The debate around data center projects is one of the rare modern issues to cut across party lines, demographics and geography -- uniting the US. As a report in AP says, from Republican-dominated Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming to swing-state Pennsylvania to Democratic-leaning New Mexico, in a divided America, the left and right unite to oppose AI data centers.

How Iran war changed how UAE deals with data centers 'forever'

The strategic shift comes in the wake of severe regional conflict that began on February 28, a day Al Olama recalled preparing for a trip to Ecuador before hostilities escalated. The UAE faced more than 1,000 projectiles and drones during the first week of the conflict alone, with launches from Iran taking only two minutes to reach the country. Al Olama noted that the UAE intercepted more aerial threats than the entire Middle East and Israel combined, resulting in zero impact on human lives or business operations.

Domestic life has since returned to normal, though the government is now decentralizing key digital assets, including splitting up its domestic Stargate data centre project and investing in offshore facilities, such as in Germany.Reflecting on broader AI policy, Al Olama warned against allowing fear to choke innovation, drawing a historical parallel to the Middle East’s technological decline after centuries of dominance from 813 to 1515 AD.

That era ended when the region banned the Gutenberg printing press for two centuries due to fears over misinformation, alterations to holy scripture, and general administrative anxiety. He cautioned that modern leaders cannot afford to repeat that mistake with artificial intelligence, even if the technology's rapid evolution initially seems frightening.When it comes to public deployment, Al Olama advocated a measured approach that avoids unproven, high-risk systems.

UAE public services, such as Abu Dhabi’s TAMM administrative platform, run on established, older large language models rather than cutting-edge frontier systems like OpenAI’s Astra or Anthropic’s Fable, which he warned carry significant cybersecurity and data breach risks. He also drew hard red lines against using AI for predictive policing, citing the danger of false positives, and cautioned against building an oppressive surveillance apparatus, pointing instead to quality-of-life improvements like desk-free biometric airport transit.To insulate the domestic workforce from technological displacement, the UAE has trained all 80,000 federal civil servants in agentic AI, following an earlier initiative that taught prompt design to one million people. Al Olama dismissed fears of mass unemployment, insisting the technology will ultimately create opportunities and boost workforce capability.

'One country regulating AI will not work, it has to be almost the entire world'

Addressing the global regulatory landscape, Al Olama noted that governments typically overregulate while the private sector tends to underregulate. He pointed to the UAE’s own data protection laws, which were initially drafted by tech companies before state officials and civil society refined them, as a model for collaborative oversight. He warned Western policymakers that unilateral bans on AI would simply hand an insurmountable advantage to competitors, arguing that restrictions in the United States make little sense unless China agrees to follow suit.