In the early hours of March 1, my screaming phone jolted me out of a Netflix binge in my Abu Dhabi apartment.
The sound bypassed silent mode, overrode every setting, and demanded attention. It was from the United Arab Emirates’ National Emergency Crisis and Disasters Management Authority, NCEMA, warning of incoming ballistic missiles and telling residents to shelter in place. Iran had begun retaliating after U.S.-Israeli strikes on the country earlier. The message came through in English, Arabic, and Filipino to every SIM card in the UAE, no app or opt-in required.
What struck me over the following days was how calm the information environment remained. NCEMA posted updates on X in the three languages. The Ministry of Interior sent emergency broadcasts to every phone connected to mobile-phone towers with clear instructions. WhatsApp was for reassuring family, not for sourcing news. With NCEMA posting updates and the threat of prosecution for sharing unverified footage, there was no vacuum for rumor to fill.
WhatsApp is the same app in both countries. The difference is what people do with it.”
The UAE’s Attorney General warned that filming interceptions or sharing unverified footage could attract fines of as much as 200,000 dirhams (around $55,000), and people for the most part complied. When the Ministry of Defence released its tally of intercepted missiles and drones, it came with specifics. As of March 15, the UAE had intercepted 298 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles, and 1,606 drones.
The contrast with what I would soon see in India was stark. The UAE had clamped down hard, with heavy fines for sharing unverified footage. India had no such restrictions, and misinformation was spreading unchecked.
On March 9, the NCEMA announced a change to the alert system. Between 9 a.m. and 10:30 p.m., the full siren sound would continue to be deployed as the alert signal. After 10:30 pm, a softer chime would take over, designed to avoid traumatizing children woken in the middle of the night. That’s the level of granularity the authorities here have been thinking about.
When I left for Kolkata, India, the city felt quieter than usual. Fewer cars on the road, fewer people out, but no armed men, no police cordons, nothing that signaled emergency. At Abu Dhabi airport, vehicle entry was funneled through the ground floor, presumably for blast mitigation, but inside the terminal everything ran smoothly. The flight was full of oil workers, mostly Indian nationals, heading home after facilities across the Gulf paused operations. No chaos. No sirens. Just the quiet efficiency of a country that has spent years preparing for any such eventuality.
When I reached home in Kolkata, the television was on.
I watched popular Indian TV channels Aaj Tak and India Today broadcast footage of explosions that turned out to be two days old and from Bahrain. I watched anchors digitally superimposed onto computer-generated war zones. I watched a panel of astrologers debate whether Iran’s horoscope was to blame for the conflict.
On March 6, the Indian government suspended television rating points, the metric that determines advertising rates and drives editorial decisions at news channels, for four weeks, citing “unwarranted sensationalism.” The government had done this once before, in 2020, after a police investigation uncovered data manipulation by certain broadcasters.
But that was about cheating the system, not the quality of the journalism. This time, the state was shaping how television covered a foreign war. Without the weekly ratings, channels lost the competitive pressure that critics say drives the hysteria in the first place.
In India, I fielded innumerable phone calls from friends and family who had seen the coverage and assumed the worst. They were certain Abu Dhabi and Dubai were in flames. They knew things I didn’t know, they told me, because they had been watching television. They had seen Dubai burning, airports destroyed, mass casualties. None of it matched what I had just lived through.
WhatsApp is the same app in both countries. The difference is what people do with it. In the UAE, it was a tool for checking in. In India, it was a vector for forwarding clips that had already been debunked. Same platform, same encryption, completely different information environment.
Dubai airport had to shut on March 16, the morning after a drone struck a fuel tank nearby, and Emirates Airlines paused operations. My phone hasn’t stopped ringing.
I’m flying back soon. To a conflict zone, yes, but also to calmer screens.
