Position: Certifiable State Integrity in Cyber-Physical Systems -- Why Modular Sovereignty Solves the Plasticity-Stability Paradox
This work addresses the challenges faced by monolithic temporal foundation models in safety-critical cyber-physical systems, where catastrophic forgetting, oversmoothing of high-frequency fault signals, and lack of verifiability compromise lifecycle-wide state integrity. To overcome these limitations, the authors propose a modular sovereignty paradigm comprising a frozen library of condition-specific expert models, coupled with an uncertainty-aware hierarchical fusion mechanism (HYDRA) that rigorously disentangles aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties. This approach enables module-level auditability and validity guarantees, effectively resolving the plasticity–stability dilemma. By doing so, it provides a certifiable pathway aligned with functional safety standards such as ISO 26262, ensuring high robustness and state integrity under non-stationary operating conditions.