"Following the June 2025 strikes, Israeli software company Radware reported a 700 percent increase in cyberattacks against Israeli targets over two days."
Radware’s numbers and the regional spillover
Radware’s reporting anchors the immediate security argument: after the June 2025 strikes, attacks surged — a 700 percent rise against Israeli targets over two days — and, over 2025, Israel accounted for about 12.2 percent of all geopolitically motivated cyberattacks worldwide, according to the same reporting. The source material traces a build-up of cyberattacks tied to operations in Gaza and the West Bank that predated the strike on Iran; the Israeli and US attack on Iran was followed by an escalation in scale, tempo and intensity.
Physical attacks on UAE data centres and the question of desirability
Analysis by James Corera and Jason Van der Schyff in The Strategist argues that physical attacks against hyperscale cloud data centres in the United Arab Emirates have shifted how buyers and governments assess hosting choices. The authors make a distinction between resilience — a cloud provider’s ability to absorb disruption, reroute workloads and maintain services — and desirability. Resilience, they say, does not by itself deliver desirability: customers, investors and governments may not want critical systems routinely operating where such contingency procedures become the norm, and "they’ll look elsewhere," the authors conclude.
Australia’s predictability: governance, distance and policy intent
Against that backdrop, the source identifies Australia’s chief comparative advantage as predictability. The country is described as having stable governance, strong legal institutions, mature regulation, legal enforceability, alignment with Western technology and intelligence ecosystems and distance from Middle East conflict. The Future Made in Australia legislation is cited as signaling "an intent to link investment, net zero, economic resilience and national capability."
Energy scale: South Australia, corporate commitments and the electricity imperative
Energy availability is presented as decisive. South Australia moved from 1 percent renewable energy generation to 74 percent in just over 16 years, with forecasts of about 85 percent this financial year and a target of 100 percent net renewables by 2027. The state points to more than A$6 billion already attracted into large-scale renewable energy and storage projects and more than A$20 billion in the pipeline. Major cloud and technology investors are already committing capital: Microsoft said in April it would invest A$25 billion in Australia by the end of 2029; AWS said in June 2025 it would invest A$20 billion from 2025 to 2029, including renewables. The report reiterates an unvarnished truth: "AI infrastructure is electricity infrastructure. Computing infrastructure follows power, and power follows places that can generate it, transmit it and price it with confidence."
What this means for technologists, policymakers, and procurement leaders
- Technologists and security teams: The Radware figures and reporting that Israeli founders have established operations and hiring abroad since October 2023 — and that 42 percent of startups had significant development delays because of the war in Gaza (Calcalist) — mean teams will be watching relocation trends, resilience pathways and cross‑region failover in architecture and staffing.
- Policymakers and regulators: The 2026 United States Studies Centre report warns that Australia’s attractiveness could be undermined if energy infrastructure, grid planning and approvals processes fail to keep pace. Data centres already account for about 2 percent of Australia’s grid‑supplied electricity demand and could reach 6 percent by 2030, the report notes; approvals and transmission timing will be decisive.
- Procurement leaders and enterprises: The Strategist’s argument about desirability — not just resilience — suggests buyers will weigh geopolitical predictability and physical-risk exposure alongside price and latency when choosing where to locate AI workloads.
The opportunity is not automatic. The source flags concrete failure modes: if approvals drag on, if grid and transmission infrastructure do not scale for AI‑scale demand, or if water‑intensive cooling systems strain local resources "without clear community benefit," investment could migrate elsewhere. Still, amid rising instability in other regions, the reporting concludes that companies are looking for places "where infrastructure can be built, powered, governed and protected for the long term" — and that "Australia can be one of those places."
