I'm making a silly, unfair comparison to be sure. It's just an interesting line of thought, not necessarily a credible one ;)

I can imagine that the first time such policies came up could have come from security or legal teams discussing foreign politics around the water cooler and thinking "We should perhaps have some policy in place, just in case".

Fundamentally, that's no different than say; implementing a D&I policy or climate actions in response to employees discussing news stories on Slack, in my mind anyway.

Just going off first principles, as us HNers love to do, I can imagine if you never had political discussion in the first place, policies such as "offsetting perceived risk of foreign governments" would never be bothered with until they're actually tangibly impacting you (ie literal foreign spies or whatever)

The whole thing is kinda moot anyway since I'm sure HR and legal teams will be discussing these things in some capacity unavoidable, just not in view of other employees.

Perhaps even more importantly, what defines "politics" is extremely vague in the first place.