Germany's National Security Council, chaired by the Federal Chancellor, has decided to establish an AI Security Institute to analyze the capabilities and risks of modern AI models. The institute will focus on assessing how advanced AI models affect cybersecurity in Germany and will boost cooperation with similar bodies abroad. It will also develop shared standards with international partners. According to IT industry group Bitkom, the institute, named the German AI Security Institute (DE-AISI), is explicitly modeled after Britain's UK AISI. The UK AISI has drawn international attention with extensive pre-release testing on security risks in Anthropic's Mythos series and GPT-5.5. The DE-AISI is expected to follow the British model closely, including its unique approach to AI safety testing.
Bitkom emphasized that the DE-AISI needs top technical talent with an international reputation to test AI models on equal footing with frontier providers like Anthropic or OpenAI. The group is pushing for salaries outside standard public pay scales, agile structures, secure infrastructure, and political backing at the highest level. Germany and the EU depend on China and the US for frontier AI, as the EU is also trying to access frontier models to test them for cybersecurity risks. So far, there has been no official word on any successful cooperation with Anthropic or OpenAI. According to Bloomberg, ENISA, the European Cybersecurity Agency, is set to receive access to Mythos. Even after repeated requests over several days, the agency couldn't comment on the report.
The situation highlights how dependent EU countries are on US and Chinese AI technology as long as Europe doesn't build its own frontier models. Model providers are tightly linked to their home governments. Anthropic reportedly sends engineers to the US government to help deploy models, including for offensive operations. Both governments have also shown they're willing to heavily regulate AI companies and tie them to state interests.
Source: thedecoder
