“Germany deserves a federal ministry with a new structure”

When the Trump administration announces the establishment of a $500 billion AI project just one day after his inauguration, it is, like many things these days, an act. Behind it, however, is a serious decision about what direction to take, not to mention a clear signal to China and Europe. The Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, on the other hand, has surprised the world with a language model that was trained with a fraction of the resources and yet appears to be on par with the competition. With new federal elections looming in Germany, these developments should serve as a wake-up call to prepare for an innovation race the likes of which we’ve never seen before.

We are facing enormous transformations in almost all the areas of life that will shape our future: the urgently needed energy transition, dealing with worsening climate change, the mobility transition, and innovative healthcare. Artificial intelligence will play a decisive role in each of these areas. However, when competing with the USA and China, we must not simply copy their strategies, but must play to our own strengths – in particular the high quality of our research data, and our experience with foundation models. Our success at the Helmholtz Association is based on strategically linking our research fields with data science.

For real innovation success, we will need an even stronger alliance between science and industry in the future. Together, we must work on completely new technologies and attain a leading global position in the innovation competition. In the coming years, we will have to think beyond the automotive industry, which is still the most important industrial sector today, and open up new future markets – including the medical sector, as I explained a few weeks ago together with Michael Kaschke from the Stifterverband.

With a series of regional and thematic innovation clusters, we would have the potential to boost development in future-critical fields. To achieve this, however, we must also try out new constellations of cooperation and new financing models, such as bolder combinations of public and private funding or tax incentives for private research and innovation funding. Of course, we will need to invest in modern education and talent from all over the world. Together, we need to enhance our welcoming culture and reduce the hurdles to international recruiting.

To achieve these goals, research and innovation must be given a prominent place on the agenda of the new federal government in the coming legislative period. Germany deserves a federal ministry with a new structure and highly competent management, one where these two areas are brought together strategically. The problem we face today is that our research is anchored in different ministries, and the current structures are not always conducive to innovation. For example, pursuing the energy transition is made more difficult when it is basically handled by the BMWK, but future technologies are negotiated on at the BMBF. On the other hand, the proposal of some stakeholders for a digital ministry seems to me too short-sighted. Digitalization should not be bundled in one ministry but must necessarily permeate all areas – from health to energy systems, climate, mobility and finance.

Finally, the new ministry must consistently focus on reducing bureaucracy in order to finally break up the “Silicon Valley” of bureaucracy in our country. Bureaucracy reduction could be implemented within a few weeks after the election as part of an immediate program to promote Germany as a research location – at no cost, of course. The proposals are on the table. Anyone who ignores them is endangering our future viability.