The FCC's math changed on March 18. Democratic Commissioner Geoffrey Starks announced he would resign in the spring, a departure that would hand Chairman Carr a working Republican majority months before a new commissioner could be confirmed, easing the path for everything from deregulation to merger conditions. The same day produced the year's biggest security deal, with Google agreeing to acquire cloud security firm Wiz for 32 billion dollars, the largest acquisition in Google's history and a signal of how seriously the cloud giants are arming up as infrastructure attacks like Salt Typhoon reshape enterprise demand. The week also delivered MWC's considered verdict, as analyst retrospectives separated Barcelona's durable signals, satellite, AI-RAN economics, open networks, from its considerable noise.
The CHIPS Act moved from legislation to checks: Washington offered TSMC up to $6.6 billion to expand its Arizona fabs, including a third plant and a commitment to bring 2-nanometer production to U.S. soil. Google, meanwhile, joined the custom-silicon club at Cloud Next, unveiling Axion — its first Arm-based server CPU — as every hyperscaler races to own its own compute stack. And Apple sent threat notifications to iPhone users in 92 countries warning of 'mercenary spyware' attacks, a reminder that the most sophisticated threats to mobile devices are bought, not built.
Brussels completed the transatlantic pincer: eighteen days after the DMA took effect, the European Commission opened non-compliance investigations into Apple, Alphabet, and Meta — testing steering rules, self-preferencing, and the legality of 'pay or consent.' Amazon answered the AI alliance question with its wallet, completing a $4 billion investment in Anthropic, its largest venture bet ever. And the week closed with a Saturday bombshell: AT&T confirmed that a dataset covering 73 million current and former customers — Social Security numbers included — was circulating on the dark web, opening the year's defining carrier-security saga.