Company Targets Defense, AI, And Security Agencies Boston Dynamics’ Washington Lobbying Surges Threefold in Two Years, Expanding Presence in U.S. Politics
A robot made by Boston Dynamics, a subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Group. (Photo courtesy of Hyundai Motor Group)
Boston Dynamics, the U.S. subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Group, is significantly intensifying its strategic lobbying activities targeting local political circles and regulatory authorities. Analysts suggest that this movement goes beyond a mere regulatory response, aiming to secure influence from the formative stages of defense, security, and high-tech policies.
Particularly striking is a lobbying approach that differs in nature from that of Hyundai Motor. While Hyundai Motor focuses on responding to manufacturing issues, Boston Dynamics is squarely targeting U.S. security and strategic technology agendas. The industry evaluates this as an attempt by Boston Dynamics to establish an independent status within the U.S. robotic technology hegemony strategy, even while operating as an affiliate of Hyundai Motor Group.
According to the U.S. Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings on April 28, Boston Dynamics executed $240,000 in lobbying funds in the first quarter of this year alone. This is equivalent to the total expenditure for the entire year of 2024 and represents the largest amount for a single quarter since its lobbying registration at the end of 2023. If the current trend continues, the annual lobbying expenditure for 2026 is expected to increase to around $1,000,000.
The level of Boston Dynamics’ policy response in the United States has been rising rapidly in recent times. While it remained at the level of $60,000 per quarter in 2024, it surged in 2025 to $170,000 in the first quarter, $190,000 in the second quarter, and $170,000 in both the third and fourth quarters. The total annual expenditure last year amounted to $700,000, which was 2.9 times the $240,000 spent in 2024.
Boston Dynamics officially began its lobbying activities in December 2023 by hiring ‘DLA Piper’, one of the largest law firms in the United States, as its lobbyist. The targets of contact are also broad. In the early stages of lobbying, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the Executive Office of the President, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Commerce were specified as the main points of contact.
Starting from the first quarter of this year, the contacted agencies expanded to include the Department of State, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Department of Transportation, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In effect, the company has launched an all-out lobbying effort targeting the U.S. Congress and the federal executive branch as a whole.
The scope of lobbying agendas has also widened with each passing quarter. Activities that were once focused on the Unmanned Ground Systems provisions of the NDAA and securing federal funding in the robotics sector expanded by the first quarter of this year to individual bills regulating the overall robotics industry, such as the National Robotics Commission Act (H.R. 7334), the American Security Robot Act (H.R. 8189), and the Humanoid Robot Act (S. 3275).
The profiles of the individuals deployed to the lobbying front are also noteworthy. A total of four people have been involved, including Tony Samp, Michael Fleischman, Karina Lynch, and Vincent Sarubbi Jr.
Sarubbi, in particular, is a so-called ‘revolving-door figure’ with extensive congressional experience, having served as Chief of Staff and Legislative Director for Representative Josh Gottheimer, Legislative Assistant for Senator Sherrod Brown, Senior Legislative Assistant for Representative Donald Norcross, and Legislative Assistant for Representative Rob Andrews. This represents a strategy to maximize accessibility to political and government circles by appointing a former congressional insider as a core lobbyist.
Inside and outside the industry, attention is also being paid to the timing of Boston Dynamics’ lobbying expansion. In the United States, federal-level institutional and regulatory frameworks for the robotics and AI industries are currently at the stage where they are beginning to be discussed in earnest.
Indeed, bills connecting the robotics industry and national security, such as the National Robotics Commission Act and the American Security Robot Act, have recently been proposed in succession in Congress. This lends persuasiveness to the interpretation that Boston Dynamics is attempting to influence the legislative direction through lobbying from the formative stages of these bills.
Interests in the defense sector are particularly direct. As the U.S. Department of Defense fully initiates the introduction of battlefield Unmanned Ground Systems (UGS), Boston Dynamics’ quadrupedal robot ‘Spot’ and bipedal robot ‘Atlas’ have emerged as strong candidates. The sustained lobbying activities aimed at UGS-related provisions within the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) are also evaluated as part of a strategy to preempt this military procurement market.
Some raise questions as to whether these moves contradict the ‘pledge against the weaponization of robots’ jointly announced in 2022 by Boston Dynamics and five other companies, including Agility Robotics, ANYbotics, Open Robotics, Clearpath Robotics, and Unitree. At the time, Boston Dynamics publicly declared that it would not mount weapons on its robots and would not allow customers to weaponize them after the fact. Given that lobbying activities targeting the NDAA ultimately premise military application, the sincerity of the pledge is effectively being put to the test.
However, the pledge in question does not outright ban cooperation with the military itself. The pledge document includes a proviso to the effect that they “do not take issue with existing technologies that nations and their government agencies use to defend themselves and uphold their laws.” This means that while mounting lethal weapons is prohibited, cooperation with the military itself remains open.
Boston Dynamics’ subsequent moves also align with this interpretation. In October last year, Boston Dynamics signed a contract to supply ‘Spot’ to the Netherlands Ministry of Defence. Spot is scheduled to be deployed for explosive ordnance disposal and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threat detection. In 2024, the company participated in the U.S. Special Operations Forces event SOF Week to directly demonstrate Spot. The current NDAA lobbying is also interpreted as aiming to enter the U.S. military procurement system as a non-combat robot for reconnaissance, detection, and transport, rather than as an armed combat robot.
Hyundai Motor is also conducting lobbying on the scale of billions of won every quarter, but Boston Dynamics is operating through a separate channel from this.
Hyundai Motor’s U.S. lobbying expenditure in the first quarter of this year was tallied at $1,095,000. The lobbying costs executed directly by Hyundai Motor’s headquarters were the largest at $730,000. Expenditures through Chartwell Strategy Group, an external lobbying channel, stood at $180,000, and expenditures through Capitol Resources were shown to be $45,000. This also included an inactivity report of $140,000 filed by Squire Patton Boggs on behalf of Hyundai Motor.
While Hyundai Motor contacts trade and industry departments focusing on automotive and manufacturing issues such as tariffs, electric vehicle subsidies, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and steel trade, Boston Dynamics has widened its surface of contact to security and high-tech lines, including the Department of Defense, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the National Security Council (NSC), the Department of State, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Since it could be politically burdensome for a private automotive company to directly target security channels, the structure is such that Boston Dynamics, an ‘American company’, assumes the frontline role in that domain.
The industry analyzes this as a strategy to maintain the premium of being an American company. By emphasizing its identity as a U.S. high-tech firm that originated at MIT, the company is positioning itself as a core asset that will safeguard America’s robotic technology hegemony, rather than merely a subsidiary of a foreign corporation.
Such positioning is also highly significant from the perspective of government relations strategy. From the U.S. government’s standpoint, it is difficult to view Boston Dynamics solely as a company under a foreign corporation, as advanced robotic technology is connected not only to manufacturing competitiveness but also to the realms of defense, logistics, infrastructure, and public safety. If Boston Dynamics simultaneously emphasizes its contributions to employment, research and development, and supply chains within the United States, it becomes easier to secure the justification to be treated on par with domestic companies in discussions regarding policy support or public procurement.
An official in the business community evaluated, “Boston Dynamics is establishing itself as a company that is recognized for its independent value within the U.S. industrial security strategy, even while being a global strategic asset of Hyundai Motor Group.”
Jung Suk-yee
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