The rise of humanoid robots threatens political disruption

FOR more than half a century, the International Robot Exhibition (iREX) has served visitors an exquisitely balanced cocktail of pragmatism and prophecy. The missing component, all of a sudden, is politics.

The biennial trade show, held since 1974 in perennially robot-fixated Japan, is first and foremost a showcase of industrial automation – the no-nonsense factory and farm machines that have steadily proliferated.

Globally, according to the International Federation of Robotics, companies installed well over half a million of these in 2024; 54 per cent in China, which has, non-coincidentally, spent more than a decade as the world’s biggest producer of industrial robots.