Ukraine’s strikes on data centers inside Russia aimed to disrupt military planning and communication services. There were also reports of another kind of disruption: to customers waiting for their dinner from food-delivery apps.

Kyiv’s drone strikes on three Yandex data centers in Sasovo, Kaluga and Vladimir saw delays and interruptions for thousands of businesses and households that rely on Yandex’s cloud infrastructure, including e-commerce, digital payment platforms and apps of food delivery and car services. Ukrainian drones on Wednesday targeted a major Sberbank data center in Russia’s Saratov region, though a senior company executive said it hadn’t affected operations.

After the strikes on Russian data centers, Kyiv noted that Moscow has already repeatedly targeted its digital infrastructure. “Ukrainians wanted to show Russians that two can play this game,” a senior official familiar with the operation told POLITICO, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The attacks and counter-attacks point to a new frontline in war: the infrastructure powering the digital economy.

The attacks on the buildings that supply compute power are akin to striking a power plant supplying the electricity, heating and fuel that both militaries and civilians depend on. It may weaken an enemy’s war effort but can also bring everyday life to a standstill.

Experts say the cost of rebuilding in Russia will be particularly high as the centers require scarce materials that must be imported. “Obtaining a large amount of equipment to replace what was destroyed is not going to be easy,” said Oleg Shakirov, a cyber policy and international security researcher, noting that most hardware needs to be imported and that is complicated by high global demand and sanctions on Russia.

“To be honest, no one really knows what’s the actual damage. Since two data centers are still offline, we can assume that it’s significant,” said Shakirov.

Joseph Jarnecki, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, warned that normalizing strikes to data centers could have a new set of dangerous consequences.

“These strikes likely breach International Humanitarian Law and it’s a big risk when global populations increasingly rely on digital services,” he told POLITICO.

When servers become targets

Data centers have entered the crosshairs of other recent armed conflicts. During the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran earlier this year, drone strikes hit three Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Since data centers can serve civilian and military purposes simultaneously, the legal status of targeting them is far from straightforward.

Kubo Mačák, an expert on international humanitarian law, said a data center must meet two conditions to qualify as a military objective under the Geneva Conventions: it must make an effective contribution to military operations and destroying it must offer a “definite military advantage.”

“If you know that they are storing military intelligence or that they’re using the data center to power military artificial intelligence tools,” Mačák said, there could be grounds to consider it a military objective.

Following the most recent strikes of the Yandex data centers, users on social media platform X reported a sudden drop in automated bot activity, including from accounts associated with pro-Russian, pro-Trump and Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) narratives.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seized on the reports to boast that the strikes had made social media less toxic, even as independent researchers and national research institutes found no evidence they specifically disrupted any Russian disinformation campaigns.

Mačák said that even if a data center is being used to “let’s say, run some trolls or these bot farms to interfere with elections abroad … that would not be sufficient.” In other words, hosting propaganda bots does not, by itself, make a data center a lawful military target.

The dual-use quandary has often focused on the targeting of energy infrastructure, which has been frequent in the Russia-Ukraine war. On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump urged Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries, blaming the attacks for rising fuel prices. He has since called for both sides to halt attacks on energy infrastructure, although the existence of any ceasefire agreement remains disputed.

As data centers become increasingly central to national economies, they will become more consequential targets. A senior NATO official granted anonymity to discuss the matter told POLITICO that data centers are already considered potential targets and that the alliance is factoring their vulnerability into its planning.

NATO allies recognize that their data centers could come under attack in a conflict, the official said: “We would get it in a fight.”

Veronika Melkozerova in Kyiv contributed to this report.

European Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius urged EU countries to keep defense spending high in the EU’s next long-term budget — or face delays in the bloc’s military ramp up.

“Please support the next [multi-annual financial framework] defense lines,” he said, speaking at POLITICO’s European Resilience Summit. Otherwise, he added, “we shall have less possibilities to build the defense systems we need to have, or to build our infrastructure in space. That’s very clear.”

His comments come as EU leaders are set meet Thursday to discuss the EU’s next long-term budget from 2028 to 2034. Over the weekend, the Council of the EU’s Irish presidency proposed cutting the Commission’s original proposal by around 8% to appease a German-led camp demanding major cuts. The cuts overwhelmingly affect EU-wide priorities such as competitiveness, defense and foreign aid.

Earlier this week, national delegations watered down a commitment to secure a deal on the budget by the end of the year.

EU money is key to “incentivize member states to go together for joint procurement, for joint development, for European development,” the former Lithuanian prime minister argued. That’s especially needed as defense spending remains too national-oriented and the defense industry too fragmented, he lamented.

“If we have less of those possibilities to incentivize member states, we shall not be able to change that situation, which is now really still not at the level we need in terms of defragmentation of European development,” the commissioner said.

BRUSSELS — The EU and China are in a good place to talk after last week’s trade deal on hybrid cars, but challenges remain, panelists at POLITICO’s European Resilience Summit on Wednesday agreed.

“From the Chinese business perspective this is very welcome,” said Linlin Liang of the China Chamber of Commerce to the EU, calling the understanding reached in Beijing “quite balanced from our perspective.”

An agreement to halve China’s exports hybrid vehicles to Europe was the main deliverable brought home by Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič.

The two sides said in a joint statement that they would keep talking about issues such as market access for medical devices and the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, an EU measure that scrutinizes foreign subsidies that distort competition in public procurement and corporate acquisitions.

Šefčovič will hold further talks with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in January, and they will meet again in March, as he pushes to rein in a €1 billion-a-day bilateral trade deficit.

Liang said Beijing stands ready to act if further talks go off track.

“I would like to remind all what MOFCOM mentioned: that they reserve the right to retaliate in case that things … don’t go around as agreed,” she told the panel on Europe in global trade, referring to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

Kathleen Van Brempt, a Belgian MEP for the Socialists & Democrats, said the most important outcome of last week’s Beijing talks was that there was “some sort of trade deal or result.”

Yet Beijing’s aggressive subsidy policies remain a hurdle, the senior trade lawmaker said, referring to a widely cited OECD study which found that Beijing’s subsidies to industry are up to eight times higher than in other countries: “It’s not normal,” she said.

Liang said that China’s export success should not be attributed solely to subsidies, and was the result of “decades of investment in innovation.”

She also said there was “a super appetite” among Chinese businesses to invest in Europe, but that they needed to assess the profitability of the EU market just like European companies.

The discussion also revealed differences between policymakers and businesses over the EU’s proposed Industrial Accelerator Act, a flagship measure aimed at steering public procurement spending toward European companies in sectors ranging from renewable energy to steel and the automotive industry.

Van Brempt, the S&D group’s lead lawmaker on the file in the trade committee, said the parliament’s three co-leads are aligned on the bill. While the center-right European People’s Party was “very divided” over the measure, she said lawmakers should be able to come to a common position.

The bill’s “Made in Europe” provision is a cause for concern for industry, meanwhile, as it risks isolating the EU from global supply chains.

“I would be careful always saying, okay, localize, put fences up,” said Holger Weintritt of German pharmaceutical company Bayer. “Let’s make sure that we still remain globally connected and look for reliable partnerships instead of isolating ourselves .”

European organizations have to reckon with how to keep up with the modern world without sacrificing sovereignty. Geopolitical instability, tightening regulatory expectations and the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) mean that, for many organizations, sovereignty now sits alongside resilience and business continuity in board-level risk discussions. The question they can no longer defer is how to harness the opportunities of the modern cloud without surrendering control over their own data. Answering it requires honesty about what sovereignty means, and about where it can actually be found.

A definition Europe can trust

The European Commission’s forthcoming Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) is the right vehicle for that honesty: giving Europe a shared, enforceable definition of what “sovereign” actually means. Without such a definition, the market is filled with commercial offerings that claim the sovereignty label without delivering the substance, a practice described as “sovereignty washing.” This gap has led some organizations to treat open source as the answer. But open source software is a licensing model, not an operating model, and it doesn’t settle questions about infrastructure or jurisdiction or even reliability and access. It’s not a route out of dependency, it’s a different dependency on project sponsors and code maintainers. A definition gives policymakers a way to properly assess claims of sovereignty against a consistent standard rather than taking marketing at face value.

Europe should not wait for CADA to take effect before acting, though. European cloud service providers (CSPs) have been partnering with established technology providers to deliver real sovereign capability, without rebuilding the entire technology stack from scratch.

The best time to plant the sovereign tree was 10 years ago

If Europe wants to grow its industrial base, it has to support the ecosystem as it is now, not as it may in 10 years’ time. CADA’s own roadmap assumes roughly five to seven years to triple the EU’s data-center capacity. Providers who have already built capacity by blending EU capabilities with proven non-EU technologies would have to spend the intervening years relinquishing their growth. It is scale, not a shortage of skills or innovation, that is the biggest practical obstacle facing a stronger European cloud market. This is precisely why partnership with proven technology sources deserves a central place in the sovereignty debate rather than being treated as a second-best option.

Partnership shortens that timeline considerably, letting European CSPs deliver sovereign, scaled services now instead of waiting for domestic capacity to catch up organically. In Italy, IPZS, owned by the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance, is using this model to build a modern Digital Application Platform for the Italian EUDI wallet, a foundational EU digital identity initiative. It provides a live example of that model working in Europe today, at the scale and speed the policy window demands.

It is through scale that the local industrial base can deliver sovereign capabilities, compete, capture market share, and invest in developing and integrating home-grown technologies. Hoping for the alternative to happen, that is for a European technological stack to fully emerge and be adopted, is the equivalent of putting the cart before the horse.

The rules need to allow for a model that’s already working

Providers, such as evoila, are now operating well beyond Europe’s borders, alongside Uniserver. This shows the model working at a broader scale, combining local operational and jurisdictional control with proven technology. Sovereignty spans jurisdictional, technological, operational and supply-chain dimensions, and a partnership model can address all four while drawing on technology already proven at scale, rather than asking every layer to be rebuilt from first principles by a single European provider.

Alongside its cloud platform, developed in-house and operated from data centers in Europe under EU jurisdiction, IONOS also offers customers a dedicated VMware-based private cloud. It is also operated within the EU and designed to provide European data sovereignty and operational control.

Broadcom’s role in that model is deliberately narrow. It supplies the VMware cloud software layer to the CSP, while the CSP itself runs the infrastructure and holds the customer relationship, so that no European customer data passes through Broadcom or is subject to its access. Trust, in this model, follows the architecture rather than the brand. If CADA’s tiers implicitly assume that sovereignty can only be delivered by a fully European-built stack, CADA would shut out precisely the route that is already allowing Europe to scale fastest: partnership between local operators and proven technology providers.

The path forward

Europe does not have to choose between moving quickly and building sovereignty. The two are compatible, provided the legislation is calibrated to recognize it. As the European Parliament and European Council work on CADA, the priority should be for it to recognize and reward the partnership models already delivering sovereign capability across Europe today.

The above column is sponsor-generated content.

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Disclaimer

POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT

• The sponsor is Broadcom Inc.
• The political advertisement is linked to Broadcom’s software business and advocacy around the Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA).

More information here.

Decades ago, the world treated global trade as a neutral ground that helped energy markets in becoming more integrated, as we still see them today. The standard view in policy circles was that trade made countries more secure and stable. Governments therefore now use tariffs and export controls as a chokepoint of power. Today interdependence between countries became a double-edged sword. Europe, for instance, faced this back in 2022, when the Russian gas that it long treated as a reliable commodity became a prominent tool of pressure overnight.

Despite the shifts towards digital economies and the massive investments that countries have been pouring in it, a major share of world trade still goes through narrow water ways. The Strait of Hormuz, Suez Canal, bab el-Mandeb Strait and many more corridors could lead to world trade disruption if partly closed. In 2023 attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea led to big containers switching their usual route through the Suez Canal and going around Africa instead. It resulted in higher insurances, increased fuel consumption and longer delivery times. At the same time, extreme drought forced the Panama Canal to cut daily Transits. Two of the worlds key sea shortcuts were constrained at once. Securing energy and trade flows in geo-economic conflicts is no longer only about protecting ships and pipelines; it is also about building systems flexible enough to absorb shocks that are now certain to come. The Hormuz crisis of 2026 made that lesson costly, and the states that act on it now will set the terms of the next era of global trade.

Despite the shifts towards digital economies and the massive investments that countries have been pouring in it, a major share of world trade still goes through narrow water ways.

Two years later, on the 28th of February 2026 as the US-Israel-Iran war started, The Iran Revolutionary Guard shut the Strait of Hormuz to control the oil that was being exported from the Gulf Cooperation Council. Within two weeks, the International Energy Agency ‘IEA’ reported that the exports through the Strait of Hormuz had fallen to a tenth of normal flows. Asian importers took the worst hit, as they highly depend on the Gulf’s crude. The damage, however, showed up in prices other than oil; for instance, urea fertilizers also flow through the strait, and its supply disruption led to higher food prices. Gulf countries demonstrated their resilience by finding alternatives to exporting away from the strait of Hormuz. The UAE, for example, Created the Habshan-Fujeirah line, which started construction in 2008 and was finished in 2012, to secure energy trade even if faced by geographical obstacles. Securing energy and trade flows is a significant topic to be discussed at the TRENDS Annual Forum on October 12, 2026, under the theme “Sustainable Security: The Post-War Future of the Middle East”.

The Middle East plays a crucial role in the global economy. It’s often faced with exposure to regional conflict, but it can secure trade through several approaches.

The Middle East plays a crucial role in the global economy. It’s often faced with exposure to regional conflict, but it can secure trade through several approaches. First, spreading the risk by creating more routes through land. The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, currently in the developments phase, is one initiative that seeks to connect several countries through one line of trade. The second approach is “Friend-shoring”, which protects sensitive supply chains by moving them to ally countries. This can be high in cost but works most efficiently when a country is faced by war. This approach demonstrates the benefits of economic partnerships and investing in ports in different geographies to secure supply chains especially given that more the 80 percent of world trade moves by sea. The third option is stockpiling. In March of 2026 the IEA agreed to release 400 million barrels of emergency reserves. Those reserves will not end the whole crises but will provide time for diplomacy to act.

These matters influence not just local residents but also have global repercussions, affecting everyday experiences worldwide through shifting costs for fuel, farming, and food supplies.

Trends Global, operating as part of TRENDS Group, is organizing its Annual Forum to examine critical issues and inquiries impacting the security of the Middle East. These matters influence not just local residents but also have global repercussions, affecting everyday experiences worldwide through shifting costs for fuel, farming, and food supplies. By gathering a diverse group of political figures, scholars, and leaders from the corporate and defense sectors, the event intends to explore the ongoing transformation of the territory. Establishing lasting stability in the post-conflict Middle East requires a departure from past patterns, ensuring that future security is not merely a reaction to a continuous cycle of emergencies.

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Bibliography

1. European Commission. (2022). REPowerEU: Affordable, secure and sustainable energy for Europe. https://commission.europa.eu/topics/energy/repowereu_en 
2. Farrell, H., & Newman, A. L. (2019). Weaponized interdependence: How global economic networks shape state coercion. International Security, 44(1), 42–79. https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/44/1/42/12237/Weaponized-Interdependence-How-Global-Economic 
3. Gulf producers race to bypass Hormuz and bab el-mandeb – oil & gas middle east. Accessed September 27, 2026. https://www.oilandgasmiddleeast.com/news/gulf-producers-race-to-bypass-hormuz-and-bab-el-mandeb
4. International Energy Agency. (2026, March 11). IEA member countries to carry out largest ever oil stock release amid market disruptions from Middle East conflict. https://www.iea.org/news/iea-member-countries-to-carry-out-largest-ever-oil-stock-release-amid-market-disruptions-from-middle-east-conflict 
5. International Monetary Fund. (2024, March 7). Red Sea attacks disrupt global trade. https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2024/03/07/red-sea-attacks-disrupt-global-trade