The United Arab Emirates is revising plans for a 5-gigawatt artificial intelligence (AI) data centre project after attacks linked to the US-Iran war prompted officials to reconsider how and where critical infrastructure should be built, according to a recent report by Reuters.

The project was originally planned as a 10-square-mile (26-square-kilometre) campus in Abu Dhabi. It will likely instead comprise a network of data centres across the UAE, four of the sources told Reuters.

Authorities are also considering measures to protect the facilities from drone and missile attacks, including air defence systems and underground construction, the sources said.

The UAE-US AI Campus is central to the country's ambitions to become a global AI hub as it seeks to diversify its economy beyond oil. The project is led by G42, an Abu Dhabi-based AI company controlled by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan, the UAE's national security adviser and brother of its president.

The project was announced during US President Donald Trump's visit to the UAE last year and involves American technology companies including Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle and Cisco.

The first phase, a $30 billion, 1-gigawatt computing cluster known as Stargate UAE, began construction last year. The first 200 megawatts of capacity is expected to come online this year.

G42 said work on the AI campus was progressing as planned, while noting that aspects of the project remained under review.

The review followed attacks in March that damaged two Amazon Web Services data centres in the UAE and another in Bahrain. Iran's armed forces also issued a video in April warning that Stargate UAE could be a potential target, according to Reuters.