️ Sarah Marie Sandmann, Innovation &
Intrapreneurship, Bundeswehr Cyber Innovation Hub
AI trust in defence starts where slides end: with a soldier under
pressure who needs to understand, rely on, and account for the
technology in their hands. Sarah Marie Sandmann works at the
Bundeswehr Cyber Innovation Hub in Innovation and
Intrapreneurship, the official innovation unit of the German
armed forces. Sandmann treats trust in defence technology as a
capability criterion, something tested under pressure, not
asserted in policy, and the organisations getting this right are
rebuilding how innovation works within the institution itself.
Episode overview
The Bundeswehr is one of Europe's most structurally complex
organisations, built for stability, accountability, and risk
minimisation, not speed. Sandmann and her colleagues run
innovation projects at 12-month cycles that would take years
through standard procurement. This episode explores what that
tension looks like in practice: how AI is deployed strictly as
decision support rather than decision replacement, how soldiers
co-develop the technologies they will eventually trust with their
lives, and why a trustworthy defence innovation ecosystem would
be measured by capabilities delivered rather than the quality of
its presentations. Sandmann also reflects on the post-Ukraine
shift she has observed from inside the institution — more
civilians wanting to contribute, more startups engaging with
defence, and what that change means for civil-military trust.
Key themes
Whether a soldier can understand, rely on, and explain an AI
system, and why all three must be true before deployment
The structural case for why large institutions are slow to
innovate, and why the people inside them usually aren't the
problem
What "decision support, not decision replacement" means as a
live design constraint for AI in high-stakes environments
How trust between military institutions and the startup
ecosystem is actually built, and what breaks it
What a trustworthy defence innovation ecosystem would need to
look like in two to three years
About the guest
Sarah Marie Sandmann works at the Bundeswehr Cyber Innovation Hub
in Innovation and Intrapreneurship, the official innovation unit
of the German armed forces. She works at the intersection of
military capability development, startup collaboration, and
responsible technology adoption, collaborating on projects that
bring AI, autonomous systems, and emerging technologies into
operational use through direct co-development with soldiers. She
has been inside the institution through the post-Ukraine shift in
civil-military engagement and speaks from that experience with
unusual clarity.
Chapter markers
[00:00] What the Cyber Innovation Hub actually does — and why
cockroaches are involved
[03:18] Trust as an operational requirement in defence
technology
[08:00] Why innovation resistance is structural, not cultural
[13:09] AI as decision support — the bright line and how it
holds
[21:22] The post-Ukraine shift and what a trustworthy
ecosystem would look like
Links
Sarah Marie Sandmann on LinkedIn —
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-sandmann/
Eva Simone Lihotzky on LinkedIn -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/evalihotzky/
Bundeswehr Cyber Innovation Hub —
https://www.cyberinnovationhub.de/en/
SwarmBioTactics and Autobugs project —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4vu5AKTkJk
Komand.AI and Smart Lead project —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r45um6txpQ
Sonic AI - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9i98jrielw
Related Episode: Why Security Intelligence Fails Before the
Attack with Assaf Kipnies -
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2D4ODAxGULFbqmXCmgwsfA
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