British Monarchy and New Technologies: King Charles Goes Virtual
The Week That Shaped the World — 19 - 26 December 2025
British Monarchy and New Technologies — and other major stories of the week
Some institutions survive not because they resist change, but because they learn to wear it with dignity. This week, the British monarchy steps — quietly, almost elegantly — into the digital age. King Charles III delivers his Christmas message in immersive 3D, recorded in the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey and brought to life through virtual reality. For the first time, those with a VR headset won’t just “watch” the monarch. They will sit in the same room — or at least, feel as if they do. Heritage meeting innovation. Tradition learning a new language.
Beyond the Abbey walls, the world feels far less composed. London questions the meaning of free speech in a country that once built its identity upon it. New “peace plans” appear on the geopolitical stage, yet the motives behind them look anything but peaceful. Diplomats whisper, markets brace, gold climbs — because gold always understands fear better than politicians do. Technology races ahead: autonomous agents, Chinese breakthroughs, driverless taxis in London before the ink on the policy papers is even dry.
It is a strange moment to live through. The past refuses to leave. The future refuses to wait.
“History doesn’t vanish in modern times — it simply upgrades its interface.”
1. British Monarchy and New Technologies: King Charles Goes Virtual
For a country that still measures history in stone, ceremony, and Latin inscriptions, it’s remarkable how quietly the future sometimes slips through the side door. This Christmas, the British monarchy did just that. King Charles III recorded his annual message in the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey — and, for the first time, it was available in virtual reality. Not as a spectacle. Not as a gimmick. But as an immersive presence, as if the sovereign were standing a few steps away, speaking in the same room.
Meta Quest headsets carried the experience. A 3D reconstruction, subtle lighting, the acoustics of the chapel — all preserved, all translated into the digital realm. The symbolism was impossible to ignore. The Crown, so often accused of being a relic, chose to move forward not by abandoning tradition, but by reframing it. The monarchy remained where it has always been — yet it also learned to exist somewhere else entirely: inside a technology that did not exist a generation ago.
There was something almost British in that contradiction. A system centuries old. A king surrounded by medieval stone and stained glass — and, at the same time, by invisible circuits and code. It was not innovation for the sake of novelty. It was survival through relevance. A quiet acknowledgment that authority today is not only about continuity, but also about proximity. If the public no longer comes to the institution, the institution may have to step a little closer.
The question is not whether this changes the monarchy. It already has. The real question is whether other pillars of the state will dare to follow — or whether they will discover, too late, that history does not wait for paperwork.
“Power that refuses to evolve does not disappear — it simply becomes decoration.”
2. Justice, Free Speech, and the British Paradox — Greta Thunberg Arrested in London
There is a peculiar brittleness in a society that prides itself on liberty when the law is suddenly invoked in ways that feel… stretched. On 23 December, Greta Thunberg — the Swedish activist known for her blunt truth-telling and polarising presence — was arrested in central London under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act. The charge? Displaying a placard in support of Palestine Action, an organisation that British authorities have labelled as “terrorist” earlier in 2025.
Let’s pause on that word: terrorism. It has power. Gravitas. A capacity to mobilise resources, attention and, crucially, force. To apply it to protestors — who, yes, sometimes cross lines — is one thing. To apply it in a context that chills expression more than it protects the public is another. Greta was held, questioned, and released on bail pending court proceedings. But the spectacle of her handcuffed on a London street — on Christmas Eve’s cusp — sends a message far louder than whatever was printed on her placard.
Britain has long described itself as a bastion of free speech: the crucible of Habeas Corpus, the home of parliamentary debate, the nation that historically tolerated dissent as a form of democracy’s bloodstream. Yet this episode suggests we are watching a new definition of liberty take shape — a version where the thresholds for enforcement broaden, and where symbolic acts carry consequences disproportionate to their intent.
Critics are already pointing out the irony. Supporters of tighter security say the law must be applied regardless of celebrity or cause. Somewhere in between lies the question most of us should be asking: in a modern democracy, how do we protect both security and the right to challenge power without conflating protest with peril?
This isn’t merely about Greta Thunberg. It’s about the narrow line between order and overreach — and whether Britain still knows where that line runs.
“Freedom isn’t declared — it’s constantly negotiated.”
3. Ukraine’s “20-Point Peace Plan” — A Strategy for Survival, Not Settlement
In politics, the word peace is often used in moments that feel anything but peaceful. This week, President Volodymyr Zelensky presented an updated “20-point roadmap” for ending the conflict in Ukraine — a document reportedly coordinated with Washington and framed as a pathway towards security guarantees, international oversight of borders, and some distant concept of stability. On paper, it is diplomacy. In reality, it looks far more like an attempt to buy time.
Ukraine today is not the country of early war-time myth. The sheen of unity has been eroded by corruption scandals, factional tensions, and a growing sense of exhaustion — both domestically and across its Western backers. Zelensky, once the global symbol of resistance, now appears cornered by circumstances he can neither fully control nor openly acknowledge. The plan, with its layers of committees, frameworks and “future guarantees”, reads less like a breakthrough and more like a carefully constructed pause.
Washington, too, understands the theatre. A managed roadmap delays decisions, shifts responsibility, keeps negotiations formally alive — without forcing anyone to confront the hardest truths. Russia remains on the battlefield. Europe remains divided. The war grinds forward with the kind of cold persistence that no summit language can soften.
What matters is not the number of points in the document, but the absence of clarity around any of them. No defined timeline. No shared interpretation of outcomes. No credible mechanism that suggests the conflict is genuinely approaching resolution. Instead, we see a political necessity disguised as diplomacy — a strategy for survival dressed up as a peace initiative.
And perhaps that is the real story here: in moments of weakness, leaders rarely negotiate to end the game. They negotiate to stay in it.
“When power runs out of options, it calls the stalemate a roadmap.”
4. Whispers in Caracas — and the Shadow Game Around Russia’s Embassy in Venezuela
Some stories do not arrive as headlines. They come as rumours, denials, and fragments that don’t quite align — which is usually when one should start paying attention. This week, several media reports claimed that families of Russian diplomats were being evacuated from Caracas amid rising tension and a U.S. naval blockade around Venezuela’s coastline. The Kremlin moved quickly to dismiss the story as fabrication, releasing footage of the embassy operating “as normal”. Official calm, public assurance, perfect composure.
And yet — the unease remains.
Diplomacy rarely evacuates families without reason. It is one of the quietest signals a state can send: we are not panicking, but we are preparing. Whether the reports are accurate or merely premature, the wider context matters far more than the press statements. Venezuela has once again become a pressure point — a testing ground where global powers negotiate influence not through speeches, but through positioning.
There is a theory circulating in strategic circles, uncomfortable but difficult to dismiss. If Washington is prepared to tighten control in its own hemisphere, Moscow may find itself publicly committed to support an ally it cannot realistically defend while its resources remain tied up in Ukraine. A tacit bargain, perhaps. You secure your backyard; we continue our campaign. Not an agreement written on paper — but an understanding shaped by limits, fatigue and leverage.
In that light, the embassy narrative looks less like gossip and more like a tremor before a shift. No explosions. No announcements. Just the subtle rearrangement of risk.
The truth may not reveal itself immediately. But history teaches us that when great powers begin moving pieces off the board, they are rarely doing it for comfort.
“Geopolitics seldom speaks plainly — it prefers to negotiate in shadows.”
5. TikTok for Sale — When “National Security” Meets the Marketplace
In the end, it was never really about culture wars, data privacy, or the moral panic of short-form videos. It was about ownership. This week, ByteDance agreed to sell a controlling stake in TikTok’s U.S. operations to a consortium of American investors — a move framed as compliance, necessity, even patriotism, depending on who happened to be speaking at the microphone.
Washington calls it a victory for national security. The language is familiar: safeguarding citizens, protecting infrastructure, defending democracy from foreign influence. And yet, if one looks past the rhetoric, what remains is a hard-edged economic truth. A wildly successful media platform — the most influential youth channel on the planet — has been forced, through regulation-by-pressure, into the arms of domestic capital. Not banned. Not dismantled. Simply transferred.
That is not censorship. That is acquisition.
For months, the saga played out like theatre. Hearings, warnings, ultimatums — all accompanied by the steady drumbeat of “risk”. Was the risk real? Possibly. Was it also politically convenient? Undeniably. In Washington, national security has long functioned as the most persuasive argument in the corporate toolkit. It justifies intervention. It legitimises takeover. It turns business into strategy.
ByteDance, reading the room, chose survival over confrontation. Investors smiled. Lawmakers declared success. And TikTok, despite the noise, will continue to shape music charts, advertising budgets, teenage identity — only now under a different financial flag.
There is a quiet lesson here for the rest of the world. Platforms are not sovereign. Markets are not neutral. When a technology becomes too powerful to ignore, it does not get destroyed. It gets domesticated.
“In modern politics, seizure rarely looks like force — most of the time, it looks like a deal.”
6. Driverless Taxis in London — The Future Arrives in the Slow Lane
London has a habit of flirting with the future while stubbornly clinging to the past. This week, that contradiction gained a new shape: Baidu’s Apollo Go — in partnership with Uber and Lyft — is preparing to launch autonomous taxis in the UK, with testing due to begin on London’s narrow streets as early as this spring. The headlines sound bold. The reality feels more complicated.
On paper, it is a technological milestone. China’s AI powerhouse exporting its driverless ecosystem into one of the world’s most regulated transport environments — a city defined by medieval road layouts, black cabs, and a bureaucracy that measures innovation in years, not months. The promise is efficiency, safety, optimisation. A glimpse of a world where cars drive themselves, algorithms handle judgement, and human error becomes a historical notion.
And yet, step outside any London café and the present contradicts the pitch. Deliveries still arrive on ageing scooters. Food couriers zig-zag through traffic in the rain. Small contractors string parcels across boroughs the old-fashioned way — engine oil, helmets, and tired hands. In Moscow, we already see delivery robots rolling along pavements; in parts of Asia, autonomous fleets quietly clock up miles. London, by comparison, talks about the future while living firmly in yesterday.
Perhaps that is the point. The city does not leap — it inches forward. The tests will be cautious. The roll-out incremental. The politics… unavoidable. Questions about safety, liability, jobs, foreign technology operating on British soil — none of them will disappear just because a sensor says it can see around corners.
But something has shifted nonetheless. The experiment is no longer theoretical. The road is real. The stakes are real. And whether London is ready or not, the car has just taken its hands off the wheel.
“Progress rarely arrives with applause — most of the time, it turns up quietly at a traffic light.”
7. Record Gold Price Signals Growing Market Anxiety
The price of gold has climbed to a new historical high this week, breaking above $4,200 per ounce and briefly moving higher before stabilising. For many investors, this rise is less about speculation and more about risk management. The move reflects a growing concern that inflation, geopolitical tensions and ongoing trade disputes are becoming structural rather than temporary.
Gold tends to attract capital when confidence in financial policy begins to weaken. In several G7 economies, inflation remains volatile, while central bank guidance increasingly diverges from real-world market behaviour. Against this background, investors are gradually shifting funds from currencies and equities into assets that are perceived as independent from government policy and global financial cycles.
This trend does not suggest panic, but it does indicate fatigue with official assurances of stability. Gold requires no political narrative and no explanatory forecasts. It is seen as a store of value that does not rely on future promises — which makes its current rally an implicit signal of doubt toward the broader economic outlook.
Whether the price continues to rise or corrects in the short term is less important than the underlying sentiment. The movement into gold shows that large market participants are preparing for scenarios that policymakers still describe as unlikely or remote. In that sense, the record price functions as a quiet referendum on trust in the current economic trajectory.
“In uncertain economies, capital does not argue with policy — it simply moves elsewhere.”
8. DeepSeek Challenges the AI Balance — A Chinese Model That Cuts Costs and Resets Expectations
China’s new AI system, DeepSeek, has become one of the most discussed developments in the global tech sector this week. The model has demonstrated performance levels comparable to leading Western systems, including GPT-5-class architectures, while reportedly being trained at a fraction of the usual computational cost. For the industry, this is less a technological curiosity and more a potential turning point in the economics of machine learning.
Until now, the dominant assumption has been that leadership in AI depends on access to vast capital, top-tier chips and enormous energy resources. DeepSeek challenges that logic. The project suggests that efficiency in training methods — optimisation, compressed architectures, alternative scaling strategies — may be just as decisive as raw processing power. For Washington and Silicon Valley, this development signals that the competitive field is shifting from “who has more GPUs” to “who can extract more value from fewer resources”.
The geopolitical implications are significant. A lower-cost training paradigm could allow emerging economies and state-backed research institutions to accelerate participation in advanced AI development without matching Western investment levels. For the United States, which is already facing domestic constraints on power supply and semiconductor availability, China’s new approach represents not only a technological rival, but a strategic one.
Markets and analysts are now watching for two outcomes: whether DeepSeek can scale commercially, and whether its methodology will force Western players to revise their own cost models. If the technology proves stable outside the laboratory environment, the result may be a redistribution of influence within the global AI ecosystem — away from a small cluster of US-centred firms and toward a more multipolar technological landscape.
In practical terms, DeepSeek is not simply another product launch. It is a signal that the barrier to entry in high-end AI may be lowering — and that the competitive map of the industry is about to change.
“Innovation doesn’t always come from more power — sometimes it comes from learning to use less.”
9. The Rise of Agentic AI — Technology Moves from Tools to Autonomous Systems
Several major technology companies have signalled a clear strategic shift this week toward what is increasingly being described as “agentic AI” — systems capable of carrying out complex tasks independently, with minimal or no direct human supervision. These agents are being positioned for functions such as financial management, travel coordination, workflow automation and enterprise operations, marking what many in the industry consider the most significant transition since the introduction of large language models.
The core idea is that AI moves from responding to instructions to managing objectives. Instead of producing outputs, these systems execute processes: booking services, reallocating assets, monitoring transactions, or interacting with other software environments on behalf of the user. This changes the relationship between human decision-making and automation, shifting parts of responsibility — and risk — from people to code.
For businesses, the potential advantages are clear: lower labour costs, faster execution cycles and the ability to operate continuously across time zones and platforms. But the shift also raises structural questions. Regulatory frameworks are not yet aligned with systems that can initiate actions autonomously. Legal accountability in cases of financial loss, security breaches or unintended behaviour remains undefined in many jurisdictions.
From a broader perspective, the move toward agentic AI indicates that the technology industry no longer views AI as a supporting instrument, but as an operational layer in its own right. This development is likely to reshape employment structures, enterprise architecture and, eventually, public-sector administration.
The coming period will determine whether these systems remain experimental or become embedded in everyday economic activity. What is already clear is that the centre of gravity in AI has begun to move — away from conversation and towards delegation.
“The real disruption is not what AI can say — it’s what it is now allowed to do.”
10. Major Deals on the London Market — BP Reshapes Its Portfolio as Petrofac Avoids Collapse
Just before the Christmas break, the London market closed several significant transactions that helped stabilise sentiment around the FTSE 100. Two of the most notable moves came from BP and Petrofac — deals that reflect very different positions, but a shared attempt to secure financial resilience in a period of uncertainty.
BP confirmed the sale of a controlling stake in Castrol, its long-established lubricants business, to the U.S. investment group Stonepeak in a deal valued at around $10 billion. For BP, the transaction is part of an ongoing effort to streamline its portfolio and reallocate capital toward projects with higher strategic priority, including energy transition ventures and core upstream operations. Castrol remains a recognisable global brand, but under the new structure it will operate with greater commercial independence while continuing its industrial partnership with BP.
Petrofac, by contrast, moved out of a critical survival phase. The company reached an agreement to sell its Asset Solutions division to CB&I, a Texas-based engineering group. The sale is widely viewed as a lifeline transaction: it provides liquidity, reduces operational risk and — most importantly — preserves thousands of UK jobs that were previously considered at risk due to Petrofac’s financial pressure. For the wider labour market, the deal acts as a buffer against potential shock in specialist engineering sectors.
Taken together, these transactions highlight a broader trend in the British corporate landscape: firms are prioritising balance-sheet stability and strategic repositioning rather than expansion for its own sake. Investors are responding not to growth narratives, but to evidence of disciplined restructuring and risk control.
Whether these moves translate into long-term competitiveness will depend on execution — but for now, they signal that key players in the UK market are preparing for a tougher operating environment rather than assuming a rapid global recovery.
“In tightening markets, survival is not about scale — it’s about choosing what to carry forward.”
