The Strikes in Iran Could Lead to Cyberattacks in the U.S.; Why Your Car Insurance Likely Went Up–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: March 5, 2026

Indy Digest: March 5, 2026

As (an undeclared) war goes on in the Middle East, we don’t have to worry much about bomb or missile attacks here in the United States.

But that doesn’t mean the U.S. can’t be harmed by actors loyal to the Iranian government.

Amazon.com was not working properly for a good chunk of the day—and this outage may (or may not) have to do with what is happening in the Middle East. After all, tech operations are under literal attack. CNBC reports:

Amazon’s data center in Bahrain was targeted by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for the company’s support of the U.S. military, Iranian state media said Wednesday.

The company’s cloud computing unit said Monday that one of its facilities in Bahrain was damaged due to a nearby drone strike on Sunday. Two data centers in the United Arab Emirates were also damaged after they were “directly struck” by drones.

All of the facilities remain offline, according to the Amazon Web Services health dashboard.

The attack in Bahrain was launched “to identify the role of these centers in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities,” Iran’s Fars News Agency said on Telegram.

Meanwhile, security experts say American institutions could be targets for cyberattacks by Iran.

CBS News reports:

“We’re tracking groups associated with the Revolutionary Guard Corps and with the Ministry of Intelligence, and those groups have gone silent,” said Alexander Leslie, Recorded Future’s senior advisor for government affairs.

Leslie works for the private intelligence company, scouring the open and dark web along with other sources to identify cyber threats against U.S. critical infrastructure, organizations, and people.

“And as of this moment, there is no evidence suggesting any significant attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure linked to Iranian threat groups,” he said.

Leslie, however, said there is evidence of low-level, low-intensity attacks associated with so-called Iran hacktivist groups.

“Cyber is no longer auxiliary to conflict. It is part of the battlefield,” he said. …

“Iran has attacked our banking system, they’ve attacked oil infrastructure, they’ve done mis- and disinformation during elections, they’ve attacked water utilities and other critical infrastructure,” (Jake Braun, executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago) said. “I think we can expect all those attacks, again, and more severe attacks.”

According to HeatlhCare IT News, “Hospitals, health systems and other healthcare organizations nationwide face real risks in the form of retaliation for U.S. military strikes on Iran, according to the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which notes that cyberattacks may come from loosely aligned hacktivist groups rather than directly from the nation-state itself.”

The same goes for banks and financial institutions. According to Reuters (via The Times of Israel): “The U.S. financial services industry is on heightened alert for potential cyberattacks amid the unfolding war in Iran, with firms stepping up monitoring for threats that often rise during periods of geopolitical conflict, say executives and analysts. The conflict has stoked concerns over the potential for Iran-linked cyberattacks on US financial services operations. According to a U.S. intelligence assessment that Reuters reported yesterday, Iran-aligned ‘hacktivists’ could conduct low-level cyberattacks against US networks, such as distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), whereby hostile actors overwhelm a targeted server with a flood of internet traffic.”

All of this is happening at a time when the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the federal agency that CNBC calls the “leading readiness body” to counteract cyberattacks, is a mess. CNBC reports: “The agency has reportedly lost about a third of its employees since Trump took office, and Madhu Gottumukkala, its temporary director, was reassigned to another division of DHS last week. During Gottumukkala’s tenure, he clashed with staff and ended major contracts, Politico reported. He also came under scrutiny for uploading sensitive documents to ChatGPT and failed a polygraph test administered by CISA staff when he sought access to records. … As of Tuesday afternoon, CISA’s website said it was last updated on Feb. 17 due to a ‘lapse in federal funding’ and is not being actively managed.”

As we often say in this space … stay tuned!

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Good news: Kristi Noem is no longer the Department of Homeland Security secretary. Not-so-good news: Her likely replacement is … well, we’ll just say he’s interesting and leave it at that. The New York Post, because why not, explains who Markwayne Mullin is: “Mullin, 48, was elected to the Senate in 2022 to serve out the remainder of the late Sen. Jim Inhofe’s term and was up for re-election to a full six-year term later this year. He previously represented the Sooner State in the House of Representatives for a decade. A married father of six children, three of whom are adopted, Mullin is also a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and is the only current senator to not hold at least a bachelor’s degree. Mullin’s background includes a brief successful career as an MMA fighter (record: 5-0), as well as the owner of a family plumbing company. In 2023, Mullin went viral for challenging Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to a fight during a Senate hearing after the two had sparred on social media. … Mullin introduced resolutions to purge Trump’s impeachments from the Congressional Record, with support from House Republican Conference Chair Elisae Stefanik (R-NY). However, the Democratic-led House at the time did not pass the measures. Mullin, who has six kids, is a staunch abortion opponent, including in cases of rape or incest or if the pregnancy puts the mother’s life at risk.”

• A watchdog group says it has received multiple complaints from members of the military claiming that higher-ups are using “end times” Christian rhetoric regarding the actions against Iran. The Guardian reports: “U.S. military commanders have been invoking extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical ‘end times’ to justify involvement in the Iran war to troops, according to complaints made to a watchdog group. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) says it has received more than 200 complaints from service members across all branches of the armed forces, including the marines, air force and space force. One complainant, identified as a noncommissioned officer (NCO) in a unit that could be deployed ‘at any moment to join’ operations against Iran, told MRFF in a complaint viewed by the Guardian that their commander had ‘urged us to tell our troops that this was “all part of God’s divine plan” and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.’ ‘He said that “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,”’ the NCO added. … In response to a request for comment on the complaints, the Pentagon did not reply, instead sharing public clips of (Pete) Hegseth discussing the operation in Iran.”

• The Conversation has a series of wonderful pieces putting the Middle East situation in context. Here are links to a few: An expert on the Middle East explains how desalination plants could become key targets in a regional battle; an international relations expert is concerned there’s no evidence the U.S. has an endgame in mind; and a diplomacy expert lays out how U.S. citizens wound up stuck in the Middle East as the attacks began. Key quote: “I think a big part of the problem here was that the Trump administration kept the knowledge of the impending attack to a very small circle of people for operational security reasons. You can’t launch a surprise attack if half of Washington knows about it. You can see a scenario by which a very trusted State Department officer has to eventually talk to a charter plane company about chartering a whole bunch of planes. They’re going to figure out pretty quickly what’s going to happen, and then you’ve got a security leak. At the same time, I think going back weeks and months, maybe people should have been arranging charter flights and military flights, kind of on spec so that you could flip the switch and get that going right away. They’re kind of starting from scratch this week.“

• As preventable diseases like measles rise around the country, the Health and Human Services secretary is going after … Dunkin’ Donuts and other places offering sugary drinks, which, last I checked, are already widely known to be not good for you. Sigh. The Hill reports: “Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said Dunkin’ and other companies will need to prove that their ingredients are safe, prompting Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) on Wednesday to reply back, ‘Come and take it.’ Kennedy, while at a rally at Brazos Hall last week in Austin, Texas, said, ‘We’re going to ask Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, “Show us the safety data that show that it’s OK for a teenage girl to drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar in it.”’ He added, as the audience applauded, ‘I don’t think they’re going to be able to do it.’”

• Closer to home: My car-insurance bill just went up; yours probably did, too. The Los Angeles Times explains why: “The top 10 insurers in California got the nod last year to raise premiums an average of 6%—on top of a 15.4% hike in 2024 and a 13% jump in 2023, according to S&P Capital IQ. Add it all up and rates by insurers who write about 85% of all California auto insurance have climbed on average more than one-third from 2023 to 2025. That means a California driver who paid the state’s average premium of $1,087 in 2022 could be paying hundreds more today. And that’s only for drivers who have avoided accidents and tickets that can drive premiums even higher. Rates have surged not only in California but also nationwide, despite new safety features in cars that help reduce collisions. Several forces are driving the higher rates. They include sharply rising prices for new cars and parts driven by inflation and exacerbated by President Trump’s tariffs; more powerful, complex and heavier vehicles; increasing speeds on the highway and a greater severity of collisions, experts say. Also contributing to higher premiums—particularly in California—are the popularity of electric vehicles, which are cheap to maintain but more costly to repair than gas-powered cars and trucks. And although rates are leveling off—with State Farm, the state’s largest insurer, recently filing for a decrease—industry analysts predict that the higher premiums for the most part are here to stay in California.”

• And finally … today’s recall news involves … a lot of Trader Joe’s stuff! NBC News has the news on how this is an expansion of a previously reported recall: “A recall of Trader Joe’s food products that may contain glass was significantly expanded on Tuesday to more than 36 million pounds nationwide, officials said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a news release that 36,987,575 pounds of various ready-to-eat and frozen chicken and pork fried rice, ramen, and shu mai dumpling products were being pulled from shelves. The recalled products are manufactured by Portland company, Ajinomoto Foods North America, Inc., which makes products for Trader Joe’s retailers across the country, according to the news release. … The announcement comes less than two weeks after the manufacturer announced a recall of more than 3 million pounds of frozen chicken fried rice after the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said it received four complaints ‘regarding glass found in product.’”

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