Let $f : X \to S$ be a family of smooth projective algebraic varieties over a smooth connected quasi-projective base $S$, and let $\mathbb {V} = R^{2k} f_{*} \mathbb {Z}(k)$ be the integral variation of Hodge structure coming from degree $2k$ cohomology it induces. Associated to $\mathbb {V}$ one has the so-called Hodge locus $\textrm {HL}(S) \subset S$, which is a countable union of ‘special’ algebraic subvarieties of $S$ parametrizing those fibres of $\mathbb {V}$ possessing extra Hodge tensors (and so, conjecturally, those fibres of $f$ possessing extra algebraic cycles). The special subvarieties belong to a larger class of so-called weakly special subvarieties, which are subvarieties of $S$ maximal for their algebraic monodromy groups. For each positive integer $d$, we give an algorithm to compute the set of all weakly special subvarieties $Z \subset S$ of degree at most $d$ (with the degree taken relative to a choice of projective compactification $S \subset \overline {S}$ and very ample line bundle $\mathcal {L}$ on $\overline {S}$). As a corollary of our algorithm we prove conjectures of Daw–Ren and Daw–Javanpeykar–Kühne on the finiteness of sets of special and weakly special subvarieties of bounded degree.

Let $\mathbb {V}$ be a motivic variation of Hodge structure on a $K$-variety $S$, let $\mathcal {H}$ be the associated $K$-algebraic Hodge bundle, and let $\sigma \in \mathrm {Aut}(\mathbb {C}/K)$ be an automorphism. The absolute Hodge conjecture predicts that given a Hodge vector $v \in \mathcal {H}_{\mathbb {C}, s}$ above $s \in S(\mathbb {C})$ which lies inside $\mathbb {V}_{s}$, the conjugate vector $v_{\sigma } \in \mathcal {H}_{\mathbb {C}, s_{\sigma }}$ is Hodge and lies inside $\mathbb {V}_{s_{\sigma }}$. We study this problem in the situation where we have an algebraic subvariety $Z \subset S_{\mathbb {C}}$ containing $s$ whose algebraic monodromy group $\textbf {H}_{Z}$ fixes $v$. Using relationships between $\textbf {H}_{Z}$ and $\textbf {H}_{Z_{\sigma }}$ coming from the theories of complex and $\ell$-adic local systems, we establish a criterion that implies the absolute Hodge conjecture for $v$ subject to a group-theoretic condition on $\textbf {H}_{Z}$. We then use our criterion to establish new cases of the absolute Hodge conjecture.