New Preprint: Substrate‑Rooted Identity for Systems Engineering

Our new preprint is now online:  

This work marks a shift from earlier AI‑centric discussions of Engram Signatures toward a domain‑agnostic systems‑engineering application. Instead of treating behavioral identity as something unique to AI models, the article shows how the same substrate‑rooted principles apply across any engineered component whose behavior evolves over time — embedded controllers, firmware modules, cyber‑physical subsystems, and heterogeneous composites.

The contribution is architectural: it integrates behavioral identity, attestation, drift monitoring, and lineage into a lifecycle‑aligned trust pipeline that complements existing trusted‑computing mechanisms. The framework is designed to sit naturally within systems‑engineering practice, connecting design, build, deployment, operation, and update under a governance layer informed by identity‑conditioned policy.

Below is the updated lifecycle diagram, which serves as the graphical abstract for the preprint. It presents a unified view of substrate‑rooted identity across the engineered‑system lifecycle and highlights how execution‑realized trust can be embedded into real workflows.

Why This Matters for Systems Engineering

As systems increasingly incorporate components whose behavior changes through fine‑tuning, environmental interaction, or nondeterministic execution, static identifiers and configuration‑based trust models become insufficient. This preprint outlines how execution‑rooted identity can serve as a systems‑engineering construct:  
- stable enough to support governance,  
- sensitive enough to detect drift,  
- and structured enough to form lineage across heterogeneous substrates.

The paper clarifies the assumptions and boundary conditions under which the construct operates and illustrates its applicability through a representative case study.

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