Stargate UAE Is Being Redrawn for a War Zone

When the presidents of the United Arab Emirates and the United States unveiled a 5 GW AI campus in Abu Dhabi on 15 May 2025, the pitch was simple: abundant power, deep capital and a location within 3,200 km of nearly half the world's population. Sixteen months later, the war that closed the Strait of Hormuz has added a requirement nobody had priced in. The campus has to survive missile and drone attacks. On 11 September 2026, Reuters reported that the UAE was revising its plan.

The campus was announced as a G42-led project with American partners, and the US Department of Commerce statement at the time said it would use nuclear, solar and gas power to keep carbon emissions low. In October 2025, G42 said construction of the first 200 MW was "well underway and progressing steadily toward the planned 2026 delivery," with Khazna, G42's data centre company, building the facility. Emirati officials began reviewing their AI infrastructure plans soon after Iran started firing missiles and drones at Gulf neighbours that host American forces, according to the Reuters sources.

The first phase is expected to continue largely as planned, with modifications to protect it from aerial attack, according to an industry executive and another person briefed on the matter. G42 told Reuters that work on the campus was progressing as planned. Distributing a 5 GW programme across the country changes the energy problem as much as the security problem. The IEA expects gas demand in the Middle East to contract by around 4 per cent in 2026, the region's first annual decline since 1993, because gas production and processing facilities have been damaged and gas-intensive industries have cut output.

Customers choosing where to place AI workloads weigh power cost, latency and risk. The first marker is whether the 200 MW first phase is energised before the end of 2026, as G42 and OpenAI have said.