The Cartel of Ignorance and the Toxic Silence

I. A Strange Experience

Whoever sends a message into the German innovation apparatus — an idea, a proposal, a correction, a warning — encounters a particular kind of response. Not rejection. Not contradiction. Not acceptance. Non-response.

The experience begins innocuously. A letter goes out, an answer is outstanding. After the second letter, the answer is again outstanding. With the third letter, the writer begins to doubt. Did he address the wrong office? Was the content too long, too unwieldy, too unintelligible? Was the tone too cautious, too demanding, too foreign? He tries another address, another tone, another occasion. The answer remains absent. It does not remain absent by chance. It remains absent systematically.

Only after several years does the writer recognise that the non-response is not a property of his individual letters. It is a property of the apparatus to which he is writing. The apparatus does not answer, because it does not have to answer. It does not answer, because its functioning does not depend on whether it answers. It does not answer, because answering would expose it to the position it is currently defending precisely by not answering: the position of the established, which need not be disturbed from outside.

This experience is not rare. In Germany it is the experience of generations. It has a name that comes from a person whose position made it authoritative. The name is: cartel of ignorance.

II. Häußer and His Word

Erich Häußer, born 1930, died 1999, was from 1976 to 1995 president of the German Patent Office. Almost twenty years. During this time he came to know Felix Wankel, Konrad Zuse, Hans von Ohain, Arthur Fischer — the inventors who shaped technical Germany of the twentieth century. He knew the inventor and worker-priest Bernhard Fülberth, who called him the confessor of the German inventors. In a Bavarian Radio interview in 1998, Häußer said about this: Father, that is wrong, at most the confessor of the German inventors.

It is the self-designation of a professional position that has no official name in the apparatus. Whoever is a confessor hears confessions from people whose burden others do not want to hear. Whoever is the confessor of inventors hears what the rest of society does not want to hear. Häußer was this person — and he was not by accident, but because he had occupied the only position in the apparatus from which one could see the whole situation.

From this position Häußer in the late 1990s formulated a finding that was printed in the Festschrift Strukturen des Aufbruchs (Structures of Departure, 2001, published posthumously). The finding is six paragraphs long. It comes without complaint, without pathos, without self-staging. It only describes. And it ends with a sentence that in its clarity belongs to the heaviest sentences about the Federal Republic written in the twentieth century:

If we do not succeed in breaking through the cartel of ignorance that is responsible for this, we shall in entirely foreseeable time become a low-wage country again, and shall be forced, out of necessity, to become inventive.

The word has not been forgotten since. It has also not been taken up. It lies in the archives. It is occasionally cited. But the observation it describes has not changed since it was written down. In certain respects, it has intensified.

III. What a Cartel Is

A cartel is an informal coordination between formally independent actors with the aim of suppressing competition. Economic cartels are forbidden because they hollow out the market. They are visible because they fix prices or quantities, which is demonstrable. When a competition judge uncovers a price cartel, he can impose fines. The mechanics of the cartel are legally graspable.

The cartel of ignorance is different. It fixes no prices. It fixes no quantities. It fixes nothing at all — because it does not need to fix anything. Its members share a perceptual category they need not coordinate, because they already have it independently of each other. The category reads: does not belong. Whoever has drawn this category onto himself — through the wrong profile, the wrong pedigree, the wrong career, the wrong concern — is not actively fought. He is inactively ignored. The cartel members do not see him, do not hear him, do not answer him. They do not do this out of malice. They do it because their perceptual category suggests to them, independently of each other, the same behaviour.

This makes the cartel of ignorance legally ungraspable. There is no headquarters that issues instructions. There is no contract that was signed. There is no offence that could be brought before a competition judge. The cartel of ignorance is the most diffuse form of coordinated behaviour — and precisely for that reason the most robust. What is not legally tangible cannot be legally dissolved.

IV. How the Cartel Concretely Works

In the same Festschrift text Häußer described how the mechanism concretely proceeds. It is worth taking him at his word:

Vast sums are spent on personnel costs and on studies, expert reports and counter-expert reports, in order to demonstrate that research results achieved by an outsider technically amount to nothing or are at least economically not feasible. If, on the other hand, an invention coming from outside is interesting and seems valuable and useful for a company, then it is also taken up without hesitation. And then, again, not only in exceptional cases, everything is done with high personnel expenditure to dispute the inventor's share in the economic success of his invention, the just wage for his work, or to keep it as low as possible.

That is the operational description. It has a twofold function. First, external ideas perceived as inconvenient are neutralised by expert reports. Second, external ideas that are valuable are taken up and removed from their originator. In both cases the outsider is excluded from the value chain. In both cases this happens with the means of the apparatus — personnel, expert reports, legal proceedings — that is, with means the outsider does not have.

The mechanism requires no conspiracy. It requires no conscious intention. It is the behaviour of an apparatus that defends its own boundaries. The apparatus members act from their professional incentives. Whoever wants to rise in the apparatus quickly learns which concerns to promote and which to delay. Whoever arrives from outside has the wrong recommendations, the wrong vocabulary, the wrong alliances. Whoever works inside has the right ones. This is not to be morally evaluated. It is the anatomy of the apparatus.

V. The Toxic Silence

It is worth examining the specific form of non-response more closely, because it differs from similar-sounding behaviours. There are different forms of silence, and not all of them are the same.

There is silence from ignorance. The addressee did not receive the message, or received it and did not understand it, or understood it but had no interest because the subject does not fall within his remit. This silence is factual. It contains no judgment.

There is silence from overload. The addressee received the message, recognised its significance, but cannot or will not engage with it because his capacities are otherwise bound. This silence is understandable. It also contains no judgment — at most an implicit apology.

And there is toxic silence. The addressee received the message, recognised its significance, has time to answer it — and consciously decides against it. Not because the message would be wrong. Rather because it is right and an answer would put the addressee in difficulties. Agreement would be a commitment. Contradiction would be open confrontation, in which the substance of the message would become visible. Engaging with the matter would be a recognition that could endanger other colleagues, other allies, other structures. Silence is the only way out that has no consequences — for the silent party.

For the one who is silenced, it has consequences. Toxic silence is not neutral. It is an active operation. It keeps a space of effect empty. It leaves a matter that should have been spoken in the unspoken. It refuses not an answer — it refuses the existence of the question. That is the sharpness which distinguishes it from passive silence. It does not fall silent about something. It silences something away.

VI. What It Costs

In the 1998 BR interview Häußer gave a series of examples that show what the cartel of ignorance costs in concrete cases. Hans von Ohain, who built the first jet engine that brought an aircraft into the air: in the USA decorated with honours, an honoured guest, a famous man. In Germany, where he originally worked, no longer perceived. Konrad Zuse, who set into the world the first programme-controlled calculating machine that can be called a computer: in Germany, according to Häußer, young computer-enthusiasts do not know the name.

Felix Wankel, who developed the Wankel engine, one of the few great German technical innovations of the postwar period: known but treated by the apparatus as an oddity. Arthur Fischer, with roughly 6,000 patents granted worldwide the most fruitful German inventor: an enterprise that could only come into being because its owner consistently claimed patent protection. The majority of small and medium inventors do not have this protection — or, as Häußer explains, cannot financially afford it.

The numbers Häußer gives are unambiguous. Domestic patent applications in Germany in 1997: 45,000. Share of major German research institutions in this: 1.89 percent — given a consumption of almost ten percent of all research funds. Share of independent inventors: 15 percent, against 20 percent in the early 1980s. An erosion that has continued. In the thirty years since Häußer's statement, the share of independent inventors in German patent activity has fallen to a low single-digit percentage. The erosion is not random. It is the structural consequence of what Häußer described.

What it costs is not primarily the lost patent. It is the lost substance of generations. Whoever has worked in Germany over the last thirty years as an independent inventor has done so in a climate in which his activity was not recognised as a contribution to the national economy, but as a personal eccentricity. The cultural devaluation of the technical authoring activity — Häußer already proposed in 1998 to use the word technical authors instead of inventors, in parallel to the cultural authors — was not taken up. It did not get through. The language of the German innovation apparatus knows the word inventor today with the same half-embarrassed connotation as in 1998. Whoever describes himself thus knows that he places himself in a position that is not taken entirely seriously.

VII. The Self-Recursion of Silence

The point of the matter lies in the mechanism by which the cartel of ignorance absorbs its own diagnosis.

Häußer formulated the finding in 1997 or 1998, in full awareness of what he was saying. He did not dress it up as a conspiracy theory. He presented it as an insider observation, supported by twenty years of office, supported by hundreds of personal acquaintances with the affected inventors, supported by statistics from his own house. It was the most authoritative voice on this matter the apparatus has ever produced.

What happened to the finding? It was printed in a Festschrift with small circulation. It was broadcast in a Bavarian Radio programme on 3 July 1998, once. It was not translated into a legislative initiative. It did not become the starting point of a public debate. It was not taken up by a major newspaper. It was not handled in the schools. It was not considered in the federal government's innovation promotion strategies.

Häußer had already mentioned in 1984 the book by the Philbert brothers — Survival without Inventions?, subtitle Germany Casts Out Its Inventors. His comment: No one could be found to contradict this disturbing finding. It was not noticed at all by our decision-makers.

That is self-recursion. The cartel of ignorance absorbs not only the inventors. It absorbs also the diagnoses that describe the phenomenon. The Philberts wrote in 1984. Häußer wrote in 1997 or 1998 with reference to the Philberts. Today others write with reference to Häußer. At every step the same process repeats: the finding is formulated, the apparatus falls silent, the diagnosis disappears into the archive. The system protects itself from its own description by receiving the description with the same gesture the description describes. Silence.

That is robust. It has been stable for at least forty years. It survives the persons who name it. It survives the generations that name it. It has become a cultural constant that cannot be dissolved by internal reform — for every internal reform initiative is received with the same silence with which it diagnoses.

VIII. What Appeals Cannot Achieve

Häußer was a man of appeals. During and after his term in office he appealed continuously. To the federal president — the golden laurel leaf for inventors. To the minister presidents — innovation as a common cause. To the industry leadership — research is not superfluous. To the educational institutions — convey affinity for technology and the natural sciences. To the federal government — found DABEI, the German Action Community for Education, Invention, Innovation.

The appeals were not without success in every individual case. The Federal President's Future Prize was established — an appeal bore fruit. DABEI was founded — an appeal created a structure. But the cumulative effect remained limited. Häußer himself spoke at the end of his life with a mixture of stoic patience and not entirely hidden resignation. He knew his diagnosis was correct. He also knew that knowledge of the diagnosis did not change the apparatus.

The reason lies in the structure of the phenomenon. Appeals assume that the apparatus wants to receive the information and only needs the right words. That is not the situation. The apparatus does not want to receive the information, because its reception would call its own constitution into question. More and better-formulated appeals change nothing about this. They strike a wall that does not consist of insufficient clarity but of self-interest. Self-interest cannot be dissolved by clarity.

This recognition is the precondition for a different way of dealing with the situation. Whoever does not share it will go on writing appeals, because no alternative occurs to him. Whoever shares it stops appealing to the apparatus. He begins to build parallel structures that do not have to convince the apparatus — because they bypass it.

IX. Parallel Visibility

Here comes the structural turn that brings the phenomenon today into a new phase.

The cartel of ignorance functioned for forty years because the communication channels were controlled by the apparatuses. Whoever was treated with silence had no possibility of circumventing the silence. A publication required a publisher. A publisher required a recommendation. A recommendation required an apparatus. A broadcast required a station. A station required permits. A lecture required a chair. A chair required an appointment. An appointment required the goodwill of other chair-holders. At every point in the chain, the apparatus was filter and gatekeeper.

Today this is different. The technical preconditions for independent visibility are given. A website costs two to thirty euros a month. A server in Iceland does not belong to the German apparatus. An AI constellation as co-author is accessible to anyone who can pay a few euros a month for a subscription. Whoever wants to publish can publish. Whoever wants to document can document. The apparatus continues to be silent — but the silence is no longer the end point. It is only one variant of behaviour, alongside the parallel visibility of substance.

This changes the constellation. It does not change it today, tomorrow, or in a year. But it changes it on a timescale in which the cartel of ignorance can no longer guarantee its own stability. Whoever formulates a finding and places it on a server in Iceland has not abolished the silence of the apparatus. But he has withdrawn the finding from oblivion. Whoever in twenty years returns to the subject — as a researcher, as a journalist, as a responsible person in an institution that then has the acute problem — will find the finding. He will find it in a form the apparatus could not erase. That is new.

The same methodical principle that in security policy achieves the displacement of reciprocity from the moment of crisis into the pre-built architecture achieves here the displacement of visibility from the moment of apparatus into permanent findability. Whoever builds architecture is no longer dependent on the willingness to escalate in the moment of crisis. Whoever builds parallel visibility is no longer dependent on recognition in the moment of apparatus. Both operations follow the same logic: to step out of the too-late moment of reacting and into the before-moment of building.

X. A Last Observation

The cartel of ignorance will not end out of its own insight. It will not be convinced by a better appeal. It will not be shaken by a sharper diagnosis. It will not be turned by an engaged interior minister, a courageous economics minister, a reform-minded research minister. The history of the last forty years shows that none of these levers works. It is not from pessimism to state this. It is from observation.

What can work is the structural change of the situation in which the cartel operates. When the apparatuses are no longer the only gatekeepers, their power of silence is restricted. When the substance of the diagnosis remains findable independent of its reception in the apparatus, the absorption by silence is broken. When the next generation, which needs the diagnosis — because it has to bear the consequences — finds it at a place that is not administered by the apparatus, then the circle of self-recursion is broken.

That is no solution in the narrow sense. It is the preparation of a solution that must come, because the structural consequences of the silence now reach also the apparatuses that bear the silence. Germany today lags on most innovation fields behind the USA, behind China, behind South Korea, behind Israel. That is precisely what Häußer predicted in 1997. It has come to pass. Whoever wants to extend the silence over the diagnosis is no longer silencing the diagnosis. He is silencing the consequence of the diagnosis. That is the final stage of self-recursion.

Whoever wants to reach again a situation in which independent inventors have a place in the German innovation apparatus cannot wait for the apparatus's insight. He must keep the inventors visible at a place the apparatus cannot reach. That is a modest task. It does not solve the problem. But it prevents the problem from continuing in its current form undisturbed. Häußer was right. He died without the consequence of his observation being drawn. Today, thirty years later, there exists for the first time the structural possibility of drawing the consequence independent of the apparatus. That is not much. But it is more than was available in his lifetime.

The cartel of ignorance is not dangerous because it is loud. It is dangerous because it is quiet. Whoever wants to break it must not become louder. He must build an architecture in which the silence and those who keep it become irrelevant.