Gulf AI ambitions face bottleneck in fragile undersea cables
Gulf nations face a strategic vulnerability as their shift from oil to AI economies relies on just a few undersea cable routes through volatile waters.
The Gulf region is pivoting from hydrocarbon exports to AI and cloud compute services, spending billions to attract hyperscalers. However, this strategy faces a critical bottleneck: 95% of international data travels through undersea cables, and the Gulf depends on a few routes through politically volatile waterways. Recent cable cuts in the Red Sea caused $3.5 billion in damages and degraded connectivity for days. Unlike traditional internet traffic, AI training and inference require massive, uninterrupted throughput. Consequently, hyperscalers are pressuring regional carriers to build physically diverse network paths to mitigate geopolitical risks.