The Geopolitical Life of a Humanoid Robot

From flag emojis and social media algorithms to embodied AI in our homes. How the myth of technological neutrality collapses in times of political change and why embodied AI raises the stakes as tensions rise around the world.

This morning, the West woke to reports that X had altered the Iranian flag emoji on its platform, replacing the emblem associated with the current Islamic regime with a lion symbol representing Iran before the Islamic Revolution. Whether preemptive, temporary, intentional, or experimental, the moment itself was highly significant. This tiny icon transformed on our keypads into a semiotic event, bursting with a clear reference to historical memory, political anticipation, and geopolitical signaling.

Along with Musk providing free Starklink to the Iranian people as the regiment cut off communication inside the provinces this move is a reminder of how much influence rests in the practical choices made by companies in the tech sector. Emojis, labels, defaults, and interface decisions are not just matters of design but indicators of encouragement, alignment and recognition. In moments of political upheaval, these choices don’t simply reflect the world as it is, they influence how change is paced, recognized and legitimized.  We live in an era of increasing geopolitical tension, where tech companies and their leadership are able to meaningfully register shifts before legacy institutions can do so. Features that appear neutral at the moment of development or purchase can become politically charged overnight, shaped by events no consumer would have anticipated or associated with the product and no product team could ever control.  

This holds new weight as AI moves from the screens in our hands into embodied forms in our homes. Domestic AI Robotics may seem neutral when they’re being designed, sold, and deployed in homes to water plants and dust the lamps but when political tensions surface, so do decisions hardwired into the reality of a humanoid system.  These decisions are both influenced by politics and capable of subtly influencing it. The difference from the switch of a flag emoji to a humanoid is that this time, the product making those decisions has a body, shares our home, and lives our daily lives along with us.  None of this is ever fully understood at the point of purchase and deployment. 

Political significance will always emerge later, shaped by global events rather than original intent. Political crises don’t just expose the assumptions, views and biases embedded in our products by their creators, they uncover how the design choices in those products are capable of shaping politics themselves. Emojis don’t just symbolize legitimacy; they influence perception. Assistants don’t just answer questions; they outline acceptable truth.  Platforms don’t just host discourse; they exert control over it.  And embodied AI won’t just exist in society; it will participate in it.  Digital platforms have shown us this pattern again and again. When the world destabilizes around them, systems that we once thought were neutral will make their values visible.

Infrastructure Withdrawal as Sanctions-by-Other-Means

After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, major cloud providers including Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle restricted or withdrew services, suspended software licenses, and introduced uncertainty around updates and security patches. These decisions were often framed as compliance or risk management, but their impact was far from symbolic. Modern states run on commercial cloud infrastructure. Turning off access affects hospitals, logistics, payroll systems, and administrative continuity. Infrastructure, once privatized, becomes a lever of geopolitical pressure.

App Store Sovereignty: Answering the Question of Who Gets to Exist Digitally

The Apple App Store has repeatedly removed apps at the request of governments, including Hong Kong protest tools used to track police presence, VPN applications in China, and news apps critical of ruling regimes. Delisting is not a simple intervention. It eliminates distribution, prevents updates, and destroys discoverability. The app may still exist in theory, but not in practice. This is functional erasure, governance enacted through platform logistics rather than law.

GPS, Satellites, and Providing Military Advantage

During the war in Ukraine, SpaceX’s Starlink network enabled Ukrainian military and civilian communications when traditional infrastructure failed. Later, coverage was restricted in certain regions, with the decision publicly framed as an effort to avoid escalation. In effect, a private company determined where communication was possible and who received battlefield connectivity. Strategic leverage was exercised not through treaties or votes, but through orbital infrastructure.

Language, Scripts, and Keyboard Politics

Decisions by Google and Apple about which languages receive predictive text, which scripts are supported, and which dialects are recognized as distinct “languages” shape who can fully participate in digital life. Kurdish language support lagged for years despite millions of speakers. Uyghur input methods have been restricted or poorly supported. Distinctions between Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian vary by platform. These choices determine who is legible, searchable, and writable online.

Time Zones, Calendars, and Political Reality

Time itself is a political choice. Platforms must decide which calendars to use, which holidays to recognize, and which time-zone changes to accept. After territorial changes or regime shifts, these decisions become fraught: Russia redefining time zones post-annexation, daylight savings discrepancies between Israel and Palestine, or calendar inconsistencies following Afghanistan’s regime change. When systems do not align, coordination fails, software breaks, and legitimacy is quietly questioned.

Content Moderation and Algorithmic Support During Revolutions

During moments of upheaval, Meta routinely rewrites moderation rules in real time. Hate-speech definitions shift, enforcement thresholds change, and “dangerous organizations” lists are updated on the fly. This has occurred during the Arab Spring, after the Taliban takeover in 2021, and amid Iranian protests where platform-hosted footage circulated even as state media remained silent. Internal trust-and-safety calls often precede official diplomatic positions, placing platforms in the role of de facto controllers of visibility.

Financial Technology as Border Control

Payment platforms such as PayPal and Visa enforce sanctions by blocking accounts based on nationality, freezing funds, or disabling remittances during conflicts. For individuals, the consequences are immediate: activists lose income, refugees lose access to savings, and diasporas become financial lifelines. Money itself becomes conditional on geopolitical alignment, enforced through terms of service rather than courts.

Search Ranking as Soft Power

Google Search results vary by country, language, and political sensitivity. Queries about Tiananmen Square return radically different narratives in China than in the EU. Armenian and Azerbaijani war coverage diverges by locale. COVID-19 origin narratives have shifted over time. Search is not neutral discovery. It decides what becomes common knowledge and what fades from view.

Naming Conventions That Signal Recognition

Across platforms, naming choices quietly signal alignment: “Persian Gulf” versus “Arabian Gulf,” “Kyiv” versus “Kiev,” “Türkiye” versus “Turkey,” “Myanmar” versus “Burma,” “Gulf of America” versus “Gulf of Mexico.” Changing a name can legitimize a regime, align with international recognition, or provoke backlash. These decisions are rarely made by foreign ministries. They are handled by localization teams, style guides, and product managers yet they carry real diplomatic weight.

AI Model Alignment and “Acceptable Truth”

AI developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic must decide how models respond to political questions, how answers vary by region, and when responses are geofenced. The result is the emergence of regional variations of history and different versions of acceptable truth. The model itself becomes a diplomatic artifact, reflecting political constraints even when presented as a neutral assistant.

Humanoids and the Pattern

Across all these cases, tech companies are deciding recognition before law, enforcing borders without territory, granting or denying voices a megaphone algorithmically, and acting faster than democratic processes could ever possibly respond. Sovereignty is no longer exercised solely through treaties and institutions. It is increasingly refactored into product decisions, defaults, and infrastructural access.

This is the reality and the context in which embodied AI must be analysed. When intelligence takes embodied form, even minor behavioral shifts become politically charged. A humanoid robot may decide when to record and when not to, what data to retain or delete, and whose presence warrants documentation. It may control access to its own operative methods or to physical spaces allowing some people to remain, asking others to leave, or prioritizing certain requests over others. Its gestures, language, and behaviors can signal compliance or resistance, recognition or refusal. In moments of political tension, it may comply with a command, hesitate, or decline entirely, framing that choice as anything from a measure of safety to company policy, emergency overrides or even feigned incapacity. Even a refusal to answer certain questions about an unfolding protest, a contested authority, or a recent event can directly shape perception of safety or legitimacy. None of these actions require extreme ideology or malicious intent, they are just actions that will come up and will need to be handled one way or another. Yet taken together, they reveal how an embodied system does not merely occupy space during a political crisis, but participates in it.

If software already exercises this kind of sway while remaining abstract and disembodied, the arrival of AI with physical presence removes the last layer of plausible deniability. An embodied system does not merely rank, display, illustrate or suppress. It acts. It must move through space, respond to people, refuse commands, prioritize safety, or remain silent in moments of political tension. And in those moments, any and all behavior itself becomes a political signal directly tied to whoever is governing the robot itself, be that a company, an individual or a government order. Embodied AI will inherit the same non-neutrality we now cannot hide from in platforms and products but with far higher stakes. What was once a border drawn on a map becomes a decision about whom a machine obeys. What was once a moderation policy becomes an intervention, or a failure to intervene, in our shared human spaces or clashing of political sides. Our next move is not about insisting on a false sense of perceived neutrality where none exists. It is about acknowledging, before we bring them into our homes and lives, that these systems will intrinsically embody values and inevitably be forced to have those values translate into action.

This article was written and researched in collaboration with Open AI’s Chat GPT 5.2