According to the October 6, 2026 episode of "Smart Life," the targeting led to the destruction of data that was stored in its cloud region in Bahrain and the UAE, which means that copying data on the cloud does not mean that it is not vulnerable to loss.
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Previously, countries kept their physical, judicial and functional records in ledgers stored inside buildings that could be bombed during a war or flooded, which prompted governments to resort to cloud storage to avoid these risks.
With growing doubts about the effectiveness of cloud storage in protecting archives, documents, and records that may hold significant legal and historical importance, countries have sought to work early on protecting this data digitally in other countries that they consider more secure while retaining full sovereignty over it, which is known as "digital embassies," which have immunity similar to the diplomatic immunity enjoyed by regular embassies.
First data embassy
The first digital embassies date back to the cyberattacks that Estonia suffered in 2007 and disrupted the websites of parliament and banks. At that time, Tallinn proposed the idea of data embassies, which are based on transferring a copy of the state's records to a friendly country to protect them from any foreign occupation or environmental risk, within an agreement that protects its control over them.
In 2017, Estonia signed an agreement with Luxembourg to lease space in data centers there with immunity similar to that of diplomatic embassies, whereby the authorities of the host country cannot enter the premises without Estonia’s permission, with the exception of cases of fire and emergencies that require urgent protection. The data is treated as the Estonian state archive and cannot be searched or confiscated.
But the word embassy may suggest broader protection than what the agreement provides, as the "Smart Life" report stated, with its introduction saying that the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations is not sufficient to regulate data hosting.
As Laura Kask, the legal officer for the Estonian digital transformation team at the time, explained, her country did not want to be the first to test this in court.
In addition, the agreement only obliges its two parties, not other countries, to protect this data, and therefore it will not stop a missile targeting that specific data, which is what the US-Iran war brought back to the forefront.
In the Russian-Ukrainian war , Kyiv tried another path without a treaty or embassy, as its parliament amended a law prior to the invasion that kept government data within the country, while Amazon helped government agencies, universities and companies move more than 10 million gigabytes to the cloud, according to the company.
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