Data Sovereignty Debated as UAE Customers Reconsider Cloud Security Following Drone Strikes

ServiceNow's CTO Warns of Data Sovereignty Risks in the Wake of UAE Drone Attack

Pat Casey, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of ServiceNow, recently discussed the growing importance of data sovereignty and the risks associated with it. During an interview at the company's Knowledge 2026 conference in Las Vegas on May 7, Casey shared a sobering story about a nearby cloud facility in the United Arab Emirates that was hit by two Shahed kamikaze drones.

The incident, which occurred a few weeks ago, resulted in a fire and irreparable data loss. However, ServiceNow's infrastructure remained untouched, thanks to a combination of luck and the fact that the drones targeted a neighboring facility operated by a hyperscaler. Casey attributes the incident to Iranian aggression and notes that it has quietly altered the way some governments and enterprises think about data residency and cloud sovereignty.

As countries around the world, including India, push companies to store citizen and enterprise data locally, Casey argues that this approach has its limitations. He points out that infrastructure itself can become vulnerable to attacks, as seen in the UAE incident. This has led some customers to reconsider their stance on sovereignty and instead opt for more distributed resilience models.

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Data Residency and Sovereignty: A Three-Model Framework

Casey describes the global sovereignty debate as evolving in layers. The simplest version is straightforward data residency, where customers want data stored locally within national borders. ServiceNow already operates local data centers in India, allowing Indian customer data to remain within the country.

The second layer is more restrictive, where governments want infrastructure managed only by local citizens or specially cleared personnel. Casey notes that ServiceNow implements this model for the US government, parts of Europe, and a soft version of it for Singapore.

The third and most maximalist version requires infrastructure to be not only located locally but also fully owned and operated by domestic entities independent of foreign control. ServiceNow has implemented this model in Europe through a partnership with Germany's Schwarz Group.

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India's Expanding Role in ServiceNow

Casey's comments on infrastructure and sovereignty came alongside a broader reflection on India's expanding role within ServiceNow. Unlike many multinational technology firms, ServiceNow made a deliberate decision early on to hold its India engineering centers to the exact same standards as teams in the US, Europe, or Israel.

Today, India is deeply embedded into the company's product engineering operations, with Hyderabad and Bengaluru emerging as major talent hubs. Casey pushes back against broad stereotypes about Indian engineering talent being confined to services-oriented work, citing the company's experiences in India.

AI and Software Engineering

Casey believes generative AI is beginning to reshape software engineering itself. Inside ServiceNow, AI coding tools have improved overall engineering productivity by roughly 15 percent. He also points to the potential for AI to dramatically widen access to software creation beyond traditional engineering backgrounds, citing the example of his 19-year-old daughter, a mechanical engineering student who used AI tools to successfully build a frontend project.