Why this matters
In August 2026 the Financial Times published a column by Roland Busch, chief executive of Siemens, under the headline "A digital iron curtain is threatening the global economy". Its standfirst names a role for Europe: a trusted connector between technology ecosystems that are drifting apart.
We think that role is the right one. We also think the formula is missing a component, and without it the role cannot be performed.
Interoperability is not trust
Interoperability decides whether two systems can exchange data. It does not decide whether they should.
Where two ecosystems do not trust each other, a shared exchange format does not create trust. It creates a channel. A connector without a measure of trust is not a bridge — it is an open door between two perimeters that regard each other as hostile.
A connector needs a measure, not an adapter.
A measure cannot be owned by the subjects it measures
Neutral measurement is impossible for whoever owns the subjects it measures. A platform cannot be a neutral arbiter of trust in agents that run on it, and a payment network cannot be a neutral arbiter of counterparty risk in transactions it settles. This is the same structural conflict that placed rating agencies outside banks rather than inside them.
It is also why the layer we build sits above models and platforms rather than competing with them. It does not ask any ecosystem to adopt another's stack. It asks only that claims about behaviour be measurable by someone who has no stake in the answer.
A measure that will not certify what it cannot evidence
The property that makes a connector trusted rather than merely permeable is the willingness to say no.
Our index declines to certify trust it cannot evidence. When evidence coverage is thin, a subject stays in the lowest band regardless of how favourable its observed behaviour looks. Every principal in our current testnet sits in that band, and that is the correct output rather than a defect: the evidence supply is narrow, and the measure reports it.
A measure that produced reassuring numbers from thin evidence would be worse than no measure at all.
What can be checked today
We publish the scale, the definition history of the index with commit dates, and the procedure for re-deriving every published figure from the database.
- Methodology and definition history: /methodology
- How the index separates subjects with different evidence profiles: /demonstration
- Full reproduction report: /reproduction-report
- Two-page methodology note: /methodology-note
Source: Roland Busch, "A digital iron curtain is threatening the global economy", Financial Times, 3 August 2026.