The Dictatorship

Why this R&B hit is causing alarm in the music industry

Published

5 months ago

November 8, 2025

Why this R&B hit is causing alarm in the music industry

Months ago, a musician named Xania Monet went viral on TikTok with a song called “How Was I supposed to Know?” In short videos, women in plaid shirts mouthed along to its mournful chorus under captions that read: “Pov: you found that one song that speaks for your soul.” Three-year-olds in the back seat of cars fumbled their way through its lyrics about growing up without a dad and falling in love with the wrong men. Listeners wept, alone in bathrooms.

There is no Xania Monet. She is a digital avatar created by a 31-year-old woman named Telisha Nikki Jones.

“How Was I supposed to Know?” made its way to radio, rose up the charts and just landed at No. 30 on the Billboard Adult R&B Airplay chart. Its success prompted Billboard to run an article marking the historic moment:

“The first known instance of an AI-based act to earn a spot on a Billboard radio chart.”

There is no Xania Monet. She is a digital avatar created by a 31-year-old woman named Telisha Nikki Jones from small-town Mississippi. Jones, an affable entrepreneur and a self-described creatorhas been writing poems since she was 24, and about four months ago she began teaching herself how to use artificial intelligence tools such as CapCut and fal.ai to create a digital persona. She uploaded her poems to an app called Suno, which set them to music. Other than Jones’ words, everything — from Monet’s voice to the melody it sang to the piano chords accompanying it — was computer-generated. Jones began to share the songs.

In short order, she was famous. Or Xania Monet was. Soon, Jones had a $3 million record dealprompting some human musicians — including R&B stalwarts Get down and SZA — to cry foul. But Jones sees the whole situation in historical terms.

“Anytime something new comes about and it challenges the norm and challenges what we’re used to, you’re going to get strong reactions behind it,” Jones told Gayle King this week on “CBS Mornings.” “And I just feel like AI — it’s the new era that we’re in. And I look at it as a tool, as an instrument. Utilize it.”

We tend to associate fears of replacement-by-machine with industrial laborers. But music has been central to the story of automation for a long time.

In the late 19th century, the invention of the the player piano — a self-playing instrument, programmed via something that resembled an early computer punch card — changed the industry. Player pianos were such a symbol of the threat of automation that in 1952, when Kurt Vonnegut wrote his famous novel about an automated society, he called it “Player Piano.”

Anytime something new comes about and it challenges the norm and challenges what we’re used to, you’re going to get strong reactions behind it.”

TELISHA NIKKI JONES

Musicians feared their livelihood would be threatened by recorded music. John Philip Sousa — he of the famous Sousa marches — was so alarmed he published a polemic in Appleton’s Magazine called “The Menace of Mechanical Music.”

“Sweeping across the country with the speed of a transient fashion in slang or Panama hats,” Sousa wrote, hopelessly dating himself, “comes now the mechanical device to sing for us a song or play for us a piano, in substitute for human skill, intelligence, and soul.”

Sousa was, in large part, writing to advocate that royalties from recordings — “mechanical rights” — should be paid to musicians. But he also worried that the phonograph, among other machines, would lead to “a marked deterioration in American music and musical taste, an interruption in the musical development of the country, and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations.” To drive the point home, the article was accompanied by cartoons, one of which depicted a baby crying as a phonograph blared in its ear. Nobody tell him about Spotify’s “White Noise Baby Sleep” playlist.

Sousa’s screed was an early entry in what became an increasingly common modern genre. Every time a new music machine was invented — like, say, a synthesizer — the musicians union would oppose it. People like me would write articles like this decrying it, and users like Telisha Nikki Jones would explain that it’s a tool, an instrument, like any other. Then, 10 years later, the change would be so widespread that nobody really could remember what the fuss was all about.

If you, like me, are happy that we live in a world of recorded sound, then you may be tempted to think the mainstreaming of AI music is — much like the phonograph — no big deal. Or a big deal that we can and should metabolize.

I would like, though, to do my best Sousa impression and argue the opposite.

Tools like Suno have effectively recycled the work of musicians in the past without their permission, let alone their participation.

In her TV appearance, Jones shows King how she makes a song — pasting in the words of one of her poems and typing in a series of prompts: “Slow-tempo, rnb, deep female soulful vocals, light guitar, heavy drums.” And then she hits create and is presented with two finished recordings. It is perhaps for this reason that Monet’s first album, made in just a few months, has 24 songs on it.

It’s worth keeping in mind that all of this is only possible because, as per Suno’s court filings in response to a lawsuit filed by Universal Music Group, Capitol Records, Sony Music, Atlantic Records, Warner Music and the Recording Industry Association of America, Suno was trained on “essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open internet.” Tens of millions of recordings, many lifetimes’ worth of creative labor, hidden beneath the create button.

Up until now, the dominant music technologies have been about music capture and reproduction. They do make it easier to make music, but someone has still always needed to compose that music, even if it takes fewer and fewer people to record a song. AI music obviates that need, and it accomplishes this because tools like Suno have effectively recycled the work of musicians in the past without their permission, let alone their participation. And, perversely, it could lead to such a glut of music that the economies of listening would be increasingly unfriendly to human-made songs.

This is what concerns me most. The vast majority of AI-generated music will be bland and enervating. But in our overwhelming media ecosystem, some people may just stop caring. Spotify has already been caught replacing real bands with fake ones to avoid paying royalties on streamed music via its Perfect Fit Content program. Many of us let algorithms dictate what we hear next, as they guide us through a never-ending stream of background music we have never heard before, will never hear again and are slowly becoming inured to entirely. Under the circumstances, who’s going to notice if that music is being generated, rather than curated, by an AI?

There is something unsettling about Billboard’s announcement of Monet’s historic achievement. It’s hedged. The publication calls “How Was I supposed to Know?” the “first known instance of an AI-based act to earn a spot on a Billboard radio chart.” It’s a “potentially historic development.”

It becomes clear that the famed charts have absolutely no faith that they can tell whether or not a song made by AI has come their way before. The difference here is that Jones has disclosed it.

“I literally was crying in my bathroom to your music,” one commenter wrote on Jones’ Facebook page. “And then I found it was AI.”

How were they supposed to know?

Ben Naddaff-Hafrey

Ben Naddaff-Hafrey is a writer and senior producer at Pushkin Industries, where he appears on Revisionist History and The Last Archive. You can follow his newsletter here.

The Dictatorship

Trump optimistic about Iran war as Lebanon truce takes effect

Published

9 hours ago

April 18, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump optimistic about Iran war as Lebanon truce takes effect

BEIRUT (AP) — Iran said it fully reopened the Strait of Hormuz to commercial vessels, but questions lingered Saturday about how much freedom ships actually had to transit the waterway as Tehran maintained its grip on the who got through and threatened to close it again if the U.S. kept in place its blockade of Iranian ships and ports.

Iran’s Friday announcement about the opening of the crucial body of water, through which 20% of the world’s oil is shipped, came as a 10-day truce between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon appeared to hold.

U.S. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, said the American blockade “will remain in full force” until Tehran reaches a deal with the U.S., including on its nuclear program.

Asked by a reporter Friday night what he will do if there’s no deal when the ceasefire expires next week, Trump said, “I don’t know. … But maybe I won’t extend it, so you’ll have a blockade and unfortunately we’ll have to start dropping bombs again.” But he also told reporters accompanying him aboard Air Force One to Washington that a deal is “going to happen,” and flatly rejected the idea of restrictions or tolls by Iran on the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump had earlier celebrated the Iranian announcement, posting on social media that the strait was “fully open and ready for full passage.” But minutes later, he issued another post saying the U.S. Navy’s blockade would continue “UNTIL SUCH TIME AS OUR TRANSACTION WITH IRAN IS 100% COMPLETE.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X that ships would use routes designated by the Islamic Republic in coordination with Iranian authorities, suggesting Iran planned to retain some level of control over the channel. It was not clear if vessels would have to pay tolls.

Iranian officials said the blockade was a violation of last week’s ceasefire agreement between Iran and the U.S. The strait “will not remain open” if the blockade continues, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, posted on X early Saturday.

A data firm, Kpler, said movement through the strait remained confined to corridors requiring Iran’s approval.

U.S. forces have sent 21 ships back to Iran since the blockade began on Monday, U.S. Central Command said on X.

Trump says new talks could happen soon

Trump imposed the blockade as part of his effort to force Iran to open the strait and accept a Pakistan-brokered ceasefire to end almost seven weeks of war that has raged between Israel, the U.S. and Iran.

The president’s decision to continue the blockade despite Iran’s announcement appeared aimed at sustaining pressure on Tehran as the fate of the two-week ceasefire reached last week remained uncertain.

Direct talks between the U.S. and Iran last weekend were inconclusive, as the two nations could not agree about Iran’s nuclear program and other points.

Trump suggested a second round of talks could happen this weekend.

“The Iranians want to meet,” he said in a brief telephone interview with the news outlet Axios. “They want to make a deal. I think a meeting will probably take place over the weekend.”

Oil prices fell Friday on hopes the U.S. and Iran were drawing closer to an agreement . The head of the International Energy Agency had warned that the energy crisis could get worse if the strait did not reopen.

Two Iranian semiofficial news agencies seemed to challenge Araghchi’s announcement about the strait.

Considered close with Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, the Fars news agency issued a series of posts on X criticizing what it said was a lack of clarity over the decision to reopen the waterway and a “strange silence from the Supreme National Security Council and the negotiating team.”

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has recently acted as the country’s de facto top decision-making body, amid doubts over the status of the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who was reportedly wounded early in the war.

The Mehr news agency also said the decision to reopen the strait needed “clarification” and required the supreme leader’s approval.

Truce in Lebanon could help US-Iran peace efforts

The ceasefire in Lebanon could clear one major obstacle to an agreement between Iran, the United States and Israel to end the war. But it was unclear to what extent Hezbollah would abide by a deal it did not play a role in negotiating and which will leave Israeli troops occupying a stretch of southern Lebanon.

Trump said in another post that Israel is “prohibited” by the U.S. from further strikes on Lebanon and that “enough is enough” in the Israel-Hezbollah war.

The State Department said the prohibition applies only to offensive attacks and not to actions taken in self-defense.

Shortly before Trump’s post, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel agreed to the ceasefire in Lebanon “at the request of my friend President Trump,” but that the campaign against Hezbollah is not complete.

He claimed Israel had destroyed about 90% of Hezbollah’s missile and rocket stockpiles and added that Israeli forces “have not finished yet” with the dismantling of the group.

Celebrations in Beirut

In Beirut, celebratory gunshots rang out at the start of the truce. Displaced families began moving toward southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs despite warnings by officials not to return to their homes until it became clear whether the ceasefire would hold.

The Lebanese army and U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon had reported sporadic artillery shelling in some parts of southern Lebanon in the hours after the ceasefire took effect.

An Israeli strike in the area of Kounine hit a car and a motorcycle, killing one person and wounding three, including a Syrian citizen, the Lebanese Health Ministry said Friday. It was the first airstrike and first fatality reported since the truce took effect.

There was no immediate response from the Israeli army or Hezbollah.

An end to Israel’s war with Hezbollah was a key demand of Iranian negotiators, who previously accused Israel of breaking last week’s ceasefire with strikes on Lebanon. Israel had said that deal did not cover Lebanon.

The fighting has killed at least 3,000 people in Iran, more than 2,290 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Thirteen U.S. service members have also been killed.

Israel says it will keep troops in Lebanon

Israel’s hard-line Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel would continue to hold all the places where it is currently stationed, including a buffer zone extending 10 kilometers (6 miles) into southern Lebanon. He said many homes in the area would be destroyed and Lebanese residents will not return.

Hezbollah has said Lebanese people have “the right to resist” Israeli occupation and that their actions “will be determined based on how developments unfold.”

Israel and Hezbollah have fought several wars and have been fighting on and off since the day after the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Israel and Lebanon reached a deal to end the earlier fighting in November 2024, but Israel has kept up near-daily strikes in what it says is an effort to prevent the Iran-backed militant group from regrouping. That escalated into another invasion after Hezbollah again began firing missiles at Israel in response to its war on Iran.

Mediators seek compromise on three points

In the Iran war, mediators are pushing for compromise on three main points: Iran’s nuclear program, the Strait of Hormuz and compensation for wartime damages, according to a regional official involved in the mediation efforts.

Trump on Friday suggested Iran has agreed to hand over its enriched uranium.

“The USA will get all the nuclear dust,” Trump said in a speech in Arizona. “We’re going to get it by going in with Iran with lots of excavators.”

Nuclear dust is the shorthand Trump frequently uses to refer to the highly enriched uranium that is believed buried under nuclear sites the U.S. bombed during last year’s 12-day war between Israel and Iran.

If true, it would be a major concession from Iran and would lock in a key demand of the U.S. to end the conflict. Neither Iran nor countries acting as intermediaries in the conflict have said Tehran has made such an agreement.

Trump said no money would exchange hands to end the war.

___

Madhani reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Ben Finley in Washington, Samy Magdy and Amir Rajdy in Cairo, Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Abby Sewell in Beirut and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.

The Dictatorship

Iran reimposes restrictions on Strait of Hormuz, accusing U.S. of violating deal to reopen it

Published

9 hours ago

April 18, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Iran reimposes restrictions on Strait of Hormuz, accusing U.S. of violating deal to reopen it

CAIRO (AP) — The dueling blockades in the Strait of Hormuz lurched into uncharted waters on Saturday. The United States pressed ahead with its campaign to choke off Iranian ports and Iran reversed an initial move to reopen the waterway, firing on a ship attempting to pass.

Confusion over the critical chokepoint threatened to deepen the energy crisis roiling the global economy and push the two countries toward renewed conflict, even as mediators expressed confidence a new deal was within reach.

Iran’s joint military command said on Saturday that “control of the Strait of Hormuz has returned to its previous state … under strict management and control of the armed forces.” It warned that it would continue to block transit through the strait as long as the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports remained in effect.

Two gunboats from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard opened fire on a tanker transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said on Saturday. It reported the tanker and crew as safe, without identifying the vessel or its destination. TankerTrackers.com reported vessels were forced to turn around in the strait, including an Indian-flagged super tanker, after they were fired on by Iran.

Iran announced earlier Saturday it was reimposing restrictions on the strait in response to a U.S. blockade on Iranian shipping and ports. Iran has prevented vessels from crossing throughout the seven-week-long war, except for ones it authorizes.

Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Commission, said that the strait was “returning to the status quo,” which he had earlier described as ships requiring Iranian naval authorization and toll payment before transiting.

The shift came a day after Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi declared the strait open while a 10-day trucewas announced between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant groupin Lebanon. An end to Israel’s war with Hezbollah was a key demand of Iranian negotiators, who previously accused Israel of breaking last week’s ceasefire with strikes on Lebanon. Israel had said that deal did not cover Lebanon.

U.S. President Donald Trump first appeared to take a similar position on reopening the strait before later saying the American blockade“will remain in full force” regardless of what Iran does until a deal is reached, including about Iran’s nuclear program.

Even as the U.S.-Iran ceasefire appeared to hold, the back-and-forth over the strait — through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil typically passes — highlighted how easily it could unravel

Control over the strait has proven to be one Iran’s main points of leverage and prompted the United States to deploy forces and initiate a blockade on Iranian ports as part of an effort to force Iran to accept a Pakistan-brokered ceasefireto end almost seven weeks of warthat has raged between Israel, the U.S. and Iran.

A data firm, Kpler, said movement through the strait remained confined to corridors requiring Iran’s approval.

U.S. forces have sent 21 ships back to Iran since the blockade began on Monday, U.S. Central Command said on X.

Pakistan announces progress toward new deal

Despite the escalation in the Strait of Hormuz, Pakistani officials say the United States and Iran are still moving closer to a deal ahead of the April 22 ceasefire deadline.

The ceasefire in Lebanon could clear one major obstacleto an agreement. Speaking at a diplomatic forum in Antalya, Turkey, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said the ceasefire in Lebanon was a positive sign, noting that fighting between Israel and Hezbollah had been a key sticking point before talks in Islamabad ended “very close” to an agreement last weekend.

Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir visited Tehran, while Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Antalya, the military and Sharif’s office said. Pakistan is expected to host a second round of talks between Iran and the U.S. early next week.

Questions linger about Lebanon truce

Even though mediators were optimistic, it was unclear to what extent Hezbollah would abide by a truce it did not play a role in negotiating and which will leave Israeli troops occupying a stretch of southern Lebanon.

Trump said in another post that Israel is “prohibited” by the U.S. from further strikes on Lebanon and that “enough is enough” in the Israel-Hezbollah war.

The State Department said the prohibition applies only to offensive attacks and not to actions taken in self-defense.

He claimed Israel had destroyed about 90% of Hezbollah’s missile and rocket stockpiles and added that Israeli forces “have not finished yet” with the dismantling of the group.

In Beirut, displaced families began moving toward southern Lebanonand Beirut’s southern suburbs despite warnings by officials not to return to their homes until it became clear whether the ceasefire would hold.

The Lebanese army and U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon reported sporadic artillery shelling in some parts of southern Lebanon in the hours after the ceasefire took effect.

The war, which began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Feb. 28, has killed at least 3,000 people in Iran, more than 2,290 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Thirteen U.S. service members have also been killed.

The Dictatorship

Regime change in Iran remains as necessary as ever

Published

10 hours ago

April 18, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Apr. 18, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

As a former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, a Navy SEAL and a member of the National Security Council under former President George W. Bush, I spent decades helping oversee U.S. military operations across the Middle East under leaders including Jim Mattis and Lloyd Austinboth of whom later served this nation as Defense secretary. If I were advising President Donald Trump now, my message would be simple: Do not confuse a pause in hostilities with Iran — or even a limited, chaotic “opening” of the Strait of Hormuz — with a durable solution to the hostility between our nations.

The president’s position on Iran has, at times, appeared inconsistent.

The president’s position on Iran has, at times, appeared inconsistent. At times, he has suggested regime change in Iran as an objective. At others, his focus has shifted toward more limited goals, such as preventing a nuclear weaponreopening the Strait of Hormuz or securing concessions through negotiation. Those are important objectives but they are not, by themselves, a strategy for ending the threat posed by the regime in Tehran. A lasting resolution requires a clearly defined end state.

That kind of clarity has been missing in how the United States has communicated its objectives. Statements suggesting overwhelming or immediate destruction may project strength, but they can also create ambiguity about U.S. intent. Deterrence works best when it’s consistent and tied to clear strategic objectives.

That starts with being clear about the threat. Iran’s leadership has consistently pursued nuclear capability, advanced its missile program, expanded proxy networks across the region and actively supported U.S. adversaries. Those are still their goals, and those goals are not going away. Iran will continue pursuing them regardless of temporary pauses or agreements.

For nearly five decades, U.S. policy has focused on slowing Iran’s progress rather than stopping it outright. Sanctions, limited strikes and negotiated agreements have each had moments of success. But nothing yet has altered the regime’s direction. Instead, our actions have bought more time for Iran to rebuild and continue advancing under less immediate pressure. The current ceasefire fits that pattern. It will lower tensions in the short term, but it will not resolve the underlying conflict.

That raises a more fundamental question: What is the objective? If the goal is simply to manage the threat, then another ceasefire and another round of negotiations may suffice. But if the goal is a lasting resolution, then the U.S. must be clear about what that requires. As long as the current regime remains in power, Iran will continue pursuing the same policies it has for decades. That’s why regime change is not a secondary objective; it is the only path to a durable resolution.

But that does not mean a U.S. invasion of Iran. It means pursuing a different strategy: one that applies sustained economic and operational pressure to the regime’s core institutions, including measures such as targeted economic and maritime restrictions, one that sets clear and enforceable conditions in any negotiation and creates the conditions for internal change over time.

Iran’s nuclear infrastructure must be fully dismantled. Its stockpile of highly enriched uranium must be removed.

First, any negotiation must be anchored in non-negotiable outcomes. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure must be fully dismantled. Its stockpile of highly enriched uranium must be removed. Support for proxy militias and terrorist networks must end. The free flow of commerce through critical waterways such as the Strait of Hormuz must be guaranteed.

Second, pressure must extend beyond military targets to the core structures that sustain the regime’s power. That includes the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, its financial networks and the internal security apparatus that enforces control at home.

Third, the U.S. should more clearly support Iranians. If regime change is to occur, then it will ultimately be driven from within. American policy can influence the conditions under which that change becomes possible: through information access, economic pressure and coordinated international isolation of the regime’s leadership.

The events of the past several weeks have already shifted the landscape. Iran’s leadership is under greater strain, its capabilities have been tested and its vulnerabilities are more visible than they have been in years. This is not a moment to reset the status quo on a regime that’s now operating from a weaker and more exposed position.

Trump was right to act on the threat Iran poses. But a ceasefire without a clearly defined political objective risks turning military gains into another temporary pause in a decades-long cycle. If the U.S. wants something more than a moment of calm, then it must be willing to define and pursue a different outcome.

There can be no lasting peace with the current regime in Tehran, which is why the current blockade is a step in the right direction. By applying sustained economic pressure without causing further destruction, or making sweeping financial concessions to Iran, it weakens the regime from within and moves us closer to the only outcome that can deliver lasting stability and peace.

Robert “Bob” Harward is a retired vice admiral, and former Deputy Commander of U.S. Central Command who served under General James Mattis helping oversee U.S. military operations across the Middle East. Harward lived in Tehran as a teenager and graduated from the Tehran American School