What comes into view when we take childhood as a window into larger political formations? How do “children” as a category reinforce or unsettle some of the most enduring foundations of modern politics? In this essay, I examine the politics of Egyptian children to bring liberalism and authoritarianism, which are oftentimes studied as separates, into a unified analytical framework. I do so by examining portrayals of Egyptian children in the media and in government discourse at a time of heightened authoritarianism in Egypt that is supported by liberal democratic states in the European Union amid a long-drawn global “War on Terror.” In particular, I examine the criminalization and incarceration of the children of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, an opposition group that was banned and designated as a “terrorist” group since incumbent President Abdelfattah Sisi, then the country’s top military commander, ousted late Brotherhood-affiliated president Mohammed Morsi in a bloody coup d’état in 2013. Examining the construction of children under an authoritarian system that is embedded in a global power structure shaped by inequalities, I show the ways in which the binary of criminality and innocence is central to the production of childhood as a site of political contestation. Children, I argue, are geopolitical actors whose invocation and governance alternately solidifies and upsets extant power relations in an increasingly uneven world.