Available worldwide via Amazon (Kindle Edition)
US: $5.99
Other regions: Local Amazon pricing
Available here:
https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B0GMXLX56T
While much of the public conversation around 6G still revolves around spectrum, speed and new antennas, a far more consequential shift is happening quietly beneath the surface. The real battle is no longer in the air interface, but inside the chip. And in that domain, one company plays a far more decisive role than is often acknowledged: Qualcomm.
She speaks sparingly, promises little and lets systems do the talking. Margarita Betrard is not a CEO who seeks the spotlight; she engineers control. Not a traditional visionary, but an architect of containment. Since taking the helm at ABN AMRO, one thing has become unmistakably clear: this bank is no longer led by instinct, but by logic, code and legal impermeability.
For more than a year, Europe has been debating competitiveness, investment and strategic autonomy. At the centre of that debate stands Mario Draghi — not as a politician, but as a system thinker with rare institutional authority.
Orange, the former France Telecom, is taking a different path. While Telefónica in Spain pursues a sharp, almost surgical reduction in workforce to fund its AI ambitions, Orange seeks balance. The company aims to embrace AI without sacrificing the human element, positioning itself as Europe’s digital sentinel.
Telefónica is a century old. Once, it embodied Spanish modernity in its most tangible form: cables, exchanges, uniforms, physical presence. Today, it is something else — or is attempting to become something else entirely. Less visible. More abstract. More algorithmic. The central question is no longer how Telefónica grows, but what it is becoming.
For most European consumers, the transition from 4G to 5G has felt underwhelming. Video streams load just as fast, messages arrive instantly and smartphones look unchanged. Yet beneath this apparent continuity, mobile networks are undergoing their most profound transformation since their invention. What is changing is not speed, but function — and with it, who creates value, who controls infrastructure and who sets the rules.
British Telecom sits at a fascinating — and risky — crossroads. While Deutsche Telekom has chosen to dominate the AI software stack with AI-Phones and proprietary clouds, BT has embraced a radically different path: industrial acceleration and the careful demolition of the past.
Europe has always expressed its values through infrastructure. Roman roads were not merely paths of stone; they were instruments of order and reach. Railways shaped the industrial nation-state. Broadcasting networks created mass culture and democratic publics. Infrastructure, in other words, has never been neutral. It is where political intent quietly hardens into daily reality.
For many, the European AI Act is a dense legal document — a framework of obligations, risk categories and compliance mechanisms designed to bring order to a rapidly evolving technological field. But this reading misses a deeper and more consequential layer. What if the AI Act is not merely a regulatory instrument, but a cultural statement?
For more than a decade, artificial intelligence has been presented as a promise: smarter decisions, safer systems, better services. In recent months, however, AI has increasingly appeared in a different role — as a rationale for large-scale job cuts. Few announcements illustrate this tension more clearly than the recent restructuring at ABN AMRO.
