Geopolitical risk: The old corporate bargain has weakened. A multinational company could once treat politics as background noise, keep its head down, and sell across markets. That assumption now breaks first in war, sanctions, technology contracts, and public campaigns.
For the UK, this is a business question. London still trades on its reputation as a financial, legal, and technology hub. British companies cannot rely on that reputation if their contracts, suppliers, clients, or shareholders pull them into conflicts that Westminster has not helped them price.
READ | US-Iran deal shows limits of American power in West Asia
Corporate neutrality after Russia’s invasion
The Infosys episode showed how quickly a commercial link can become a political liability. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Rishi Sunak, then UK chancellor and later prime minister, faced questions over his wife Akshata Murty’s stake in Infosys, the Indian IT company co-founded by her father, N R Narayana Murthy. Infosys said in April 2022 that it was urgently closing its Moscow office after pressure over its Russia presence. The Guardian later reported that the company still had staff and subcontracting links in Russia months after saying it was exiting.
The point is not that every overseas office becomes a sanctions breach. It is that ownership, family links, client exposure, and geography now travel together in public debate. A company’s defence that it is a commercial actor may satisfy lawyers. It will not always satisfy voters, employees, or Parliament.
Technology contracts and political scrutiny
The pressure is sharper for technology companies because their products can sit inside state power. Google and Amazon’s Project Nimbus, signed with Israel in 2021, was a $1.2 billion cloud services deal meant to serve the Israeli government and defence system. The Israeli finance ministry described it as cloud infrastructure for government and the defence establishment.
The contract has since become a flashpoint. Google fired 28 employees in April 2024 after office protests against the Israel cloud contract. Protesters said the project could support military uses; Google said the contract did not involve sensitive military or intelligence work and that the employees had disrupted offices.
The same dispute followed Sundar Pichai to Stanford in June 2026. More than 100 graduates walked out during his commencement address in protest against Google’s role in Project Nimbus. The incident did not damage Google’s balance sheet. It did show that corporate contracts can follow a chief executive into campuses, hiring markets, and consumer politics.
A cloud contract is no longer read as plumbing. Artificial intelligence, data storage, cybersecurity, and satellite links can be read as extensions of state capacity. The companies selling these services need a clearer answer than neutrality.
READ | RBI monetary policy faces West Asia oil shock test
Sanctions risk for UK business
Sanctions have also reduced the space for ambiguity. The UK, US, and EU may agree on broad aims and still differ on timing, scope, exemptions, enforcement, and secondary exposure. A British company may be legally allowed to serve a market under UK rules and still face US pressure through banks, dollar clearing, insurers, or American clients.
Iran showed this problem after the US left the JCPOA in 2018. European governments tried to shield trade with Iran, including through INSTEX, while US secondary sanctions made banks and companies wary of touching Iranian business. The legal right to trade was not the same as commercial ability to trade.
Russia has hardened this lesson. The UK’s Russia sanctions guidance now covers financial, trade, transport, immigration, and director-disqualification measures under the Russia regulations. The UK has also moved further into end-use controls, with tighter licensing where goods may be diverted to sanctioned territories.
British firms need to treat sanctions risk as part of business design, not as a late legal review.
PEST analysis for geopolitical risk
The old PEST checklist still has value, but it is too thin if it stops at taxes, labour law, inflation, consumer behaviour, and digital infrastructure.
Political risk should include sanctions exposure, sovereign alignment, dual-use controls, parliamentary scrutiny, and the legal position of host governments. Economic risk should include payment rails, insurance cover, dollar settlement, supplier concentration, and forced exit costs. Social risk should include employee dissent, campus campaigns, consumer boycotts, and investor pressure. Technology risk should include data localisation, cloud sovereignty, cyber exposure, and restrictions on AI or dual-use systems.
This does not require companies to predict every conflict. It requires them to know which contracts, markets, suppliers, and customers would become exposed if a war, sanctions package, or human-rights finding changes the risk rating overnight.
A company selling cloud services to a government, maintaining an office in a sanctioned country, or relying on a single politically exposed supplier should price the exit before the crisis arrives.
READ | West Asia conflict tests India Inc’s supply chain resilience
UK business needs clearer rules
Westminster should not leave each company to guess the next public backlash. The UK government can set clearer risk categories for high-exposure jurisdictions, state-linked contracts, dual-use technologies, and sanctioned supply chains. That would not remove judgment from corporate boards. It would reduce the gap between legal compliance and reputational risk.
The UK already has machinery for sanctions, export controls, and financial supervision. The missing layer is guidance that links these tools to corporate exposure before a crisis. Human-rights due diligence, dual-use technology licensing, cloud contracts with foreign governments, and supply-chain concentration should sit inside the same risk map.
Technology policy also has to be part of this answer. If British companies depend entirely on American or Chinese cloud systems, chips, AI models, and security tools, they inherit other governments’ politics. Domestic capacity in secure cloud, semiconductor design, cybersecurity, and AI will not make the UK self-sufficient. It can give British firms more room when alliances split or sanctions move faster than contracts.
Supply chains need the same treatment. Friend-shoring should not become a slogan for expensive procurement. It should identify where a company cannot afford a sudden exit, asset freeze, shipping disruption, or boycott. Some costs will rise. The alternative is to discover the true cost during a war.
Corporate neutrality still has a place in diplomacy. It has less value as a business shield. British companies need contracts and supply chains that can withstand politics, because politics now travels through them.
Kumar Kuntikanamata is Councillor in Fleet Town council, Hampshire, UK. He is an expert in pharma industry and worked for many global firms. He has also worked as Vice Chairman for British South India Council of Commerce.