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Present-day social media and the webscape as a whole have been infiltrated by fake AI-generated content, blurring the lines between reality and fabrication. Capitalising on this trend, a photographer recently pulled off a clever twist, by winning a ‘<keyword id="22091170" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="best-AI-image" source="keywords">best AI image</keyword>’ award with an actual photograph!<br /><br />To be fair, <keyword id="22091173" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Miles-Astray" source="keywords">Miles Astray</keyword>’s photograph of a headless flamingo appeared so surreal, only AI could have made it up. From quirky proportions and missing parts to a bizarre vibe overall, it embodied the hallmarks of <keyword id="22091178" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="AI-imagery" source="Orion">AI imagery</keyword>.<br /><br />Titled “F L A M I N G O N E,” the photo seized third place in the AI category of the <keyword id="22091174" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="1839-Awards" source="keywords">1839 Awards</keyword>’ <keyword id="22091175" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Color-Photography-Contest" source="keywords">Color Photography Contest</keyword> and even won the People’s Vote award.<br /><br /><div type="twitter" handle="MilesAstray" handlename="MilesAstray" favoritecount="0" retweetcount="0" id="1801276040628633848"></div><br />While it's difficult to believe that this image wasn’t generated by any AI tool, it’s actually true. Astray took this shot on the beaches of Aruba two years ago. Although the photo was later disqualified when Astray revealed its true origin, it had already achieved its intended impact.<br /><br />Speaking to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/17/headless-flamingo-photo-ai/">The Washington Post</a>, Astray shared that “F L A M I N G O N E” was designed to deliver a compelling message about nature’s unmatched creativity, which he believes surpasses anything AI can replicate.<br /><br />He further intended to provoke thought about the rapidly evolving capabilities of AI imagery, which is becoming indistinguishable from genuine photography.<br /><br />“What are the implications and the pitfalls of that? I think that is a very important conversation that we need to be having right now,” Astray stated, emphasising the urgency of addressing these concerns.<br /><br />The revelation drew an overwhelmingly positive response, with social media users flooding Astray with “hilarious, thoughtful and heartfelt comments”. Despite disqualifying his entry for not fitting the AI category, the contest organisers, too, appreciated the “powerful message” Astray’s submission conveyed.<br /><br />The real story behind the photograph can be found on <a href="https://www.milesastray.com/news/newsflash-reclaiming-the-brain">Miles Astray’s website</a>.<br />

Uno reverse! Photographer wins ‘best AI image’ award using a real photo, sends message on nature’s unmatched creativity

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Miles Astray won a prize in an AI contest with a photo that wasn't generated by AI. </li><li>He later said it was a stunt to highlight the ethical issues of AI-generated images in contests.</li></ul><p>A photographer won a prize in a competition for AI-generated photographs — except the picture he submitted was real.</p><p>Miles Astray's image of a flamingo won third place in the AI-generated category of the <a target="_blank" href="https://1839awards.com/contests/color-photo-contest">1839 Awards' Color Photography Contest</a> last week.</p><p>But the photographer was later disqualified after he disclosed that he'd fooled the judges to make a point, <a target="_blank" href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/14/style/flamingo-photograph-ai-1839-awards/index.html">CNN</a> reported.</p><p>In an article for <a target="_blank" href="https://fortune.com/2024/06/18/artificial-intelligence-generative-ai-technology/">Fortune</a>, Astray wrote that he "felt bad about leading the jury astray" with his stunt but wanted to highlight the ethical implications of AI-produced imagery.</p><p>The 38-year-old told <a target="_blank" href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/article/2024/jun/13/photographer-takes-on-the-machines-in-ai-competition-and-wins">The Guardian</a>: "Of course, I deliberately chose a picture that is so surreal, to the point of unbelievable, that it could easily be attributed to AI being at play."<br /><br />In a way, Astray's attempt to dupe the judges could be viewed as a form of performance art. In his Fortune article, Astray noted that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bad-ai-art-is-overrunning-facebook-2024-3">AI-generated images</a> had been in the news because they'd <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/artist-won-photography-competition-ai-generated-image-sony-world-awards-2023-4">won photo contests</a> they "were not supposed to compete in," which he said showed how fast AI had proliferated in recent years.</p><p>But Astray chose to come clean after the winners were announced and informed the Creative Resource Collective, the organization behind the awards. <br /><br />In an Instagram post caption last week, he wrote: "I entered this actual photo into the AI category of the 1839 Awards to prove that human-made content has not lost its relevance, that Mother Nature and her human interpreters can still beat the machine, and that creativity and emotion are more than just a string of digits."</p><p>Astray added that he was surprised by the reaction from Lily Fierman, a cofounder and director of the awards, whom he said "remarked that she appreciates the powerful message and that it was an important and timely statement."</p><p>The AI category was won by <a target="_blank" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C7lJ7wEBsP_/?hl=en&amp;img_index=1">Robyn Finlayson</a>.</p><p>The Creative Resource Collective didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.</p>

This picture won a prize in an AI competition — but it's real 

<ul class="summary-list"><li>OpenAI CTO Mira Murati weighed in on the topic of AI-driven job loss.</li><li>AI will eliminate some creative jobs, "but maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place," she said.</li></ul><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-mess-concerns-over-nda-safety-sam-altman-2024-6">OpenAI</a>'s CTO <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-mira-murati-openai-new-interim-ceo-2023-11">Mira Murati</a> weighed in on AI-driven job loss this month, suggesting that some workers — especially creatives — replaced by AI had jobs that "shouldn't have been there in the first place."</p><p>In doing so, she not only outraged people at risk of losing their livelihoods due to technological advancements but also seemed to reveal that she doesn't even know what AI is good for, artists and a tech writer argue.</p><p>During an event at Dartmouth on June 8, Murati, speaking to university trustee Jeffrey Blackburn, discussed the AI behind <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-chat-gpt-2023-1">ChatGPT</a><strong> </strong>and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/dall-e-mini">DALL-E,</a> as well as safety and ethical considerations as the technology progresses.</p><p>When the conversation turned to how AI can disrupt the process for artists, Murati said she believes the tech will soon be primarily used as a collaborative tool to help more people <em>become </em>creative.</p><p>"Some creative jobs maybe will go away," Murati said, "but maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place — you know, if the content that comes out of it is not very high quality."</p><p>Notably, Murati raised the topic of AI-driven job loss on her own.</p><p>The creative community was already skeptical about OpenAI after reports the company may have <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-youtube-videos-ai-model-training-data-google-blocks-2024-3">scraped YouTube videos</a> to train its models without creators' permission, and rolled out a convoluted <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-dalle-opt-out-process-artists-enraging-2023-9">opt-out process</a>. OpenAI's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-convince-sora-wont-destroy-hollywood-2024-3">video generator, Sora</a>, has also spooked Hollywood with its eerie but remarkably realistic <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-sora-new-video-generator-model-ai-sam-altman-2024-2">AI-generated clips</a>.</p><p>Scarlett Johannson was among the highest-profile figures to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/scarlett-johansson-angry-chatgpt-voice-declined-offer-openai-sam-altman-2024-5">balk at OpenAI</a>, lawyering up after the company released a voice for its ChatGPT bot that sounded remarkably like hers — which OpenAI claimed was a coincidence.</p><p>Murati's comments just made things worse, two photographers and a writer argue.</p><p>Ed Zitron, writer, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.betteroffline.com/">podcast host</a>, and CEO of EZPR, a national tech and business public relations agency, told Business Insider that Murati's perspective results from management's distance from the people who <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/save-tech-industry-fire-managers-ceo-hire-coders-developers-executives-2024-6">actually build things</a>.</p><p>"The people losing their jobs to AI so far have been contract workers that helped fill gaps at organizations — necessarily so — that are now going to be filled with deeply mediocre slop, ordered by people who don't understand the businesses they're in, to fulfill a need that they neither care about nor appreciate, a kind of slow-moving poison that will weaken the edges of companies," Zitron said.</p><p>Zitron added he's tired of people "who don't build or write or draw or paint or sing or do anything creative making statements about what the creative arts should be, or how they should be run."</p><p>"These people treat creativity like a problem to be solved," he continued.</p><p>When Business Insider reached representatives for OpenAI, they declined to comment, instead pointing to a June 22 <a target="_blank" href="https://x.com/miramurati/status/1804567253578662264">post on X</a> by Murati expanding on her thoughts.</p><h2 id="8898b393-ae86-4522-9972-a4f16e1e7f14">How artists are actually approaching AI</h2><p>Boris Eldagsen is a photographer and visual artist who embraces AI. Last year, as part of an effort to demonstrate how impossible it is to tell the difference between "real" and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/artist-won-photography-competition-ai-generated-image-sony-world-awards-2023-4">AI-generated artwork</a>, he entered — and won — the World Photography Organization's Sony World Photography Awards with a picture created with help from OpenAI's DALL-E2. He ultimately declined the award.</p><p>Where in the past he was "a solo instrument" working to create new work, Eldagsen told BI that he now collaborates with AI technology, considering himself more of a conductor while the training data serves as a "gigantic, anonymous choir," making his job to "bring that into some kind of harmony and make sense out of it."</p><p>That said, he still doesn't agree with Murati.</p><div type="image" title="German photographer Boris Eldagsen shows a printed photograph of his work &quot;Pseudomnesia: The Electrician&quot; which he had created with the usage of artificial intelligence." height="3872" width="6000" msid="111269066" hostid="261"></div><p>"I think it's a pity, and I can't feel any empathy here. For me, her comments are a mix between being naive and arrogant," Eldagsen told BI. "I think she didn't really think it through, or she can't put herself in the position of those people who are afraid of losing their jobs."</p><p>To say those jobs that could be eliminated by AI shouldn't exist in the first place, Eldagsen said, "is just nonsense," and to suggest poor quality is at the core of why those jobs might be lost shows Murati doesn't have much of a grasp on how and why people create or consume things.</p><p>"The majority of things that we produce are not high quality. We have fast food, we have trash TV, we have bad products that you can use one time, and then you throw them away," Eldagsen said. "All these things shouldn't be there in the first place, but all these things are work that some people have to do. They pay the rent, they enable a living — and why should you just be so arrogant and say it shouldn't exist? This is something that I just don't understand."</p><p>Miles Astray, an artist, photographer, and writer, told Business Insider that Murati's comments come across as "condescending."</p><p>Like Eldagsen, Astray made AI the focal point of one of his art pieces this month: He turned Eldagsen's stunt on its head and took 3rd place in an <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/picture-won-prize-ai-competition-real-miles-astray-2024-6">AI art contest</a> with a real-life photo he'd shot of a flamingo.</p><div type="image" title="Miles Astray's photograph of a flamingo" height="2409" width="3609" msid="111269063" hostid="261"></div><p>Astray said he doesn't buy the narrative of creativity being boosted by AI. Asking a computer to do creative work, he said, cheapens the process and ultimately produces an end result that's a regurgitated copy of the data the AI was trained on, not an example of a human's creative expression.</p><p>"You need to sit down with your piece of paper and your paintbrush and start painting — that is how you hone your skill," Astray said. "I think who it will really boost is companies, who will use it as a tool to increase productivity and to cut corners."</p><p>In the end, Astray said he sees the tension between tech and creativity as less about making the creative process easier and more about companies leveraging technology to outsource jobs to the point where they no longer need to employ a creative workforce.</p><p>"I think we need to have an honest public debate about the advantages, but also the pitfalls and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-new-dark-age-risks-regulations-2024-5">dangers of AI technology</a>," Astray said. "But that's not what she was doing."</p><h2 id="a0f7b209-8341-49e6-aab8-f512b4385233">'Mediocre is all they want'</h2><p>"AI tools could lower the barriers and allow anyone with an idea to create," Murati wrote in her June 22 post on X. "At the same time, we must be honest and acknowledge that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-could-automate-more-than-half-of-banking-jobs-citi-2024-6">AI will automate certain tasks</a>. Just like spreadsheets changed things for accountants and bookkeepers, AI tools can do things like writing online ads or making generic images and templates."</p><p>She added that a key part of the conversation around <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-job-cuts-finance-wall-street-investment-banking-analysts-hiring-2024-4">AI-driven job loss</a>, especially among creative professions, is to "recognize the difference between temporary creative tasks and the kind that add lasting meaning and value to society."</p><p>"With AI tools taking on more repetitive or mechanistic aspects of the creative process, like generating SEO metadata, we can free up human creators to focus on higher-level creative thinking and choices," Murati wrote. "This lets artists stay in control of their vision and focus their energy on the most important parts of their work."</p><p>The technology <em>does </em>have the ability to free up time, make some repetitive work tasks more efficient, and give artists more space to ideate on the things that actually make them creative, Astray acknowledged, but he said not everyone has the drive to be creative — and it's unlikely AI would magically change that fact.</p><p>Eldagsen said AI technology has offered him a new medium to explore his own creative ideas. However, he's heard the promise of "enhanced creativity" before — when the computer was invented, when digital cameras became popular, and with the advent of the smartphone. He said he didn't see a boom in new creatives then, either — just people who were already creative exploring new ways to make art.</p><p>"Throughout the last two years of AI hype, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-anthropic-ai-ignore-rule-scraping-web-contect-robotstxt">OpenAI</a> and their ilk have been exceedingly careful not to directly attack labor," Zitron told BI. "What Murati is saying here — that some creative jobs 'shouldn't have existed in the first place' — is an outright declaration of war against creative labor, clearly stating that OpenAI believes that not only are there parts of creativity that are 'inefficient,' but that OpenAI will be part of the process of 'fixing' them."</p><p>Zitron said he believes that AI is approaching the top of the S-curve, with limited progress left to be achieved, and that Murati, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-chatgpt-openai-ceo-career-net-worth-ycombinator-prepper-2023-1">Sam Altman</a>, and the rest of OpenAI are "desperate to suggest that we're just about to have AGI or some sort of magnificent machine that can do the job of a hundred thousand people."</p><p>Such a suggestion keeps the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-using-ai-bain-survey-roi-2024-6">money flowing</a> as companies clamor for the latest version of a promising new technology that promises to make their workplace faster, more efficient, and cheaper to run.</p><p>"The output from AI is mediocre, barely rising to the quality that the task requires," Zitron said. "But the people in charge are so often removed from the process that mediocre is all they want, even if it ends up making the rest of the project worse."</p>

OpenAI's CTO treats creativity like a problem to be solved &mdash; and that itself is the problem

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Ukraine is putting renewed effort into its fight against Russia's electronic warfare, CNN reported.</li><li>A drone operator detailed how Russia is using its systems against Ukraine's most advanced weapons.</li></ul><p>Ukraine is focused on destroying Russia's electronic warfare systems that are increasingly hampering its advanced weaponry, <a target="_blank" href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/29/europe/ukraine-russia-electronic-warfare-intl-cmd/index.html">CNN</a> reported.</p><p>Ukraine's military has reported destroying multiple Russian systems in recent weeks, including a "<a target="_blank" href="https://news.yahoo.com/military-ukraine-destroys-russian-electronic-082021502.html">Pole-21</a>" electronic warfare system and a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/11/13/7428464/">Svet-KU</a>.</p><p>Pavlo Petrychenko, the drone commander of Ukraine's 59th Motorized Brigade, told CNN that Ukraine needs to destroy those weapon systems to be able to take back territory from Russia.</p><p>He said Russia has been using electronic warfare systems to interfere with Ukraine's communications and drones since it launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.</p><p>But Russia has more recently been using its systems against the advanced weapons from the West, like the US-donated HIMARS, Petrychenko said.</p><p>"When we started to receive foreign equipment, they started to use these systems to suppress our weapons," he said.</p><p>Electronic warfare systems can seriously hamper advanced weapons, by jamming signals or by confusing a missile as to where it is, causing it to miss its target.</p><p>According to an <a target="_blank" href="https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/11/23/russia-is-starting-to-make-its-superiority-in-electronic-warfare-count">article</a> published in the Economist last week, Ukraine discovered in March that its Excalibur GPS-guided shells had started missing their targets, and something similar was happening to its American-supplied JDAM-ER guided bombs.</p><p>The report said that this was also the case with Ukraine's HIMARS-launched GMLRS long-range rockets. "In some areas, a majority of GMLRS rounds now go astray," it said.</p><p class="p1">The article also pointed to a May report from the Royal United Services Institute that estimated that Russia had one major electronic warfare system every 10 kilometers, about six miles, along the frontline. </p><p>Experts have previously said that Russia's jamming was <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-electronic-warfare-interfering-with-ukrainian-radios-bombs-2023-7?r=US&amp;IR=T">interfering with Ukrainian bombs and weapons, and making them miss their targets</a>.</p><p>Pentagon documents leaked in April revealed US concerns that Russian jamming was reducing the accuracy of American-made weapons given to Ukraine, as <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-electronic-warfare-interfering-with-ukrainian-radios-bombs-2023-7?r=US&amp;IR=T">Business Insider previously reported</a>.</p><p>Compared to older weapons systems, modern systems like HIMARS are particularly vulnerable to electronic warfare because they use GPS to hit their targets, CNN noted.</p><p>Ukraine has been pushing back with its own use of electronic warfare systems.</p><p>Ukraine was able to drastically increase its domestic drone production — something that has helped transform the fighting — and Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, told CNN that Ukraine aims to replicate this with its electronic warfare systems.</p><p class="paragraph inline-placeholder">"We are not only scaling UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) production, we are scaling EW production too and generally changing the approach to the use of electronic warfare," he said.</p><p>Ukraine's top general, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, wrote in an op-ed for the Economist earlier this month that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraines-iron-general-needs-more-airpower-shatter-russias-lines-2023-11?r=US&amp;IR=T">Ukraine having more of its own electronic warfare systems will be the "key to victory</a>" in a fight dominated by drone warfare.</p><p>But he warned that Russia was outdoing Ukraine in developing its own electronic warfare systems.</p>

Ukraine is focusing on blowing up Russia's electronic warfare systems that are impeding its advanced weapons

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Beyoncé's new album "Cowboy Carter" was released on Friday.</li><li>She was inspired to make it after an experience when she "did not feel welcomed."</li></ul><p>A new era of Beyoncé music is upon us. The sequel to her latest album "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/beyonce-renaissance-best-album-of-the-year-2022-12">Renaissance</a>," also known as "Act II," is called "Cowboy Carter," and has arrived to push the yee-haw agenda.</p><p>Beyoncé confirmed the title on her <a target="_blank" href="https://www.beyonce.com/">website</a> several weeks after teasing the album in <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-mysterious-super-bowl-commercial-hint-beyonce-appearance-las-vegas-2024-2">a Verizon commercial</a> that aired during the Super Bowl, in which she declared, "They ready, drop the new music."</p><p>The brief comment <a target="_blank" href="https://x.com/brettxboon/status/1756859544112926724?s=20">set the internet ablaze</a>. Shortly after, Beyoncé confirmed her eighth studio album would arrive on March 29.</p><p>Back when "Renaissance" dropped in 2022, it was enigmatically described as "Act I" on her website, though no other details were revealed at the time.</p><p>Beyoncé also released <a target="_blank" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C3Ot8xfRIaA/">a trailer on social media</a> that indicated a pivot to country music. The video shows Beyoncé driving past a sign that reads, "Radio Texas: 100000 Watts of Healing Power" and a billboard with the tagline "Texas! Hold 'Em." (Beyoncé famously hails from Houston.)</p><p>The short clip includes snippets of "Maybellene" by Chuck Berry and a brand new single by the superstar herself, "<a target="_blank" href="https://youtu.be/g92AYBlNOi0?si=zYiu7QwohkfQkq6V">Texas Hold 'Em</a>."</p><p>"Texas Hold 'Em" quickly became <a target="_blank" href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/beyonce-texas-hold-em-number-1-hot-country-songs-chart-1235610582/">the first song by a Black woman</a> to reach No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. It has also notched <a target="_blank" href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/beyonce-texas-hold-em-hot-100-number-one-second-week-1235621285/">two weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100</a> so far.</p><p>"Texas Hold 'Em" was released alongside another single, "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fV37wdHG8U">16 Carriages</a>."</p><p>"At 15, the innocence was gone astray / Had to leave my home at an early age / I saw mama praying, I saw daddy grind / All my tender problems, had to leave behind," Beyoncé sings in the chorus of "16 Carriages."</p><p>Both songs recall "Daddy Lessons," the sixth track on Beyoncé's album "Lemonade."</p><p>Fans had already speculated that Beyoncé was teasing more country music when <a target="_blank" href="https://www.vogue.com/article/beyonce-grammys-2024-louis-vuitton-country">she wore a cowboy hat</a> and a leather bolo tie to the 2024 Grammy Awards.</p><p>Her <a target="_blank" href="https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/beyonces-renaissance-exhilarating-big-budget-stage-design">"Renaissance" tour visuals</a> also included references to Western iconography and Southern culture, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wmagazine.com/culture/beyonce-horse-history-renaissance-album-cover-explained">especially horses</a>, which may be intended to represent Beyoncé's connection to her hometown.</p><p>Country, folk, bluegrass, and Americana artists have recently experienced <a target="_blank" href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23920808/noah-kahan-vermont-dial-drunk-stick-season-tiktok">a surge in popularity</a>, with artists like Morgan Wallen, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/noah-kahan-stick-season-interview-2022-10">Noah Kahan</a>, Zach Bryan, and Kacey Musgraves leading the charge. At the Grammys in February, Luke Combs was nominated for a countrified cover of Tracy Chapman's 1988 song "Fast Car." They performed the song as a duet; it was widely considered <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/grammys-best-worst-performances-2024-2">a highlight of the ceremony</a>.</p><p>Last April, Variety <a target="_blank" href="https://variety.com/2023/music/news/cmts-morgan-wallen-country-streaming-march-1235573629/">reported</a> that country music was seeing a "historic streaming spike," largely fueled by Wallen's blockbuster album "One Thing at a Time."</p><p>Wallen also represents the genre's thorny relationship with racism. Back in 2021, he was harshly rebuked when <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-wallen-timeline-controversies-racial-slur-2023-3">he was caught on video using the N-word</a>. However, once the initial backlash died down, Wallen was welcomed back by radio stations and industry executives.</p><p>Beyoncé herself <a target="_blank" href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-conservative-cma-beyonce-dixie-chicks-20161103-htmlstory.html">inspired backlash from country fans</a>, an audience that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/11/4/13521928/beyonce-cma-awards-controversy-deleted-performance">tends to lean white and conservative</a>, when she performed "Daddy Lessons" at the 2016 Country Music Association Awards with The Chicks.</p><h2>Beyoncé said she was inspired to make a country album after an uncomfortable experience</h2><p>To mark the album's 10-day countdown, Beyoncé shared the official cover art on Instagram. She also shared the story behind "Cowboy Carter."</p><p>"This album has been over five years in the making. It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn't," Beyoncé wrote.</p> <p>Many have speculated that Beyoncé was referring to her performance at the 2016 Country Music Association Awards.</p><p>Even before her performance took place, it sparked backlash from conservative country fans who questioned Beyoncé's place in the genre. Many music critics defended Beyoncé, pointing out her Texas roots and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11526188/beyonce-country-music-black-roots">the often-ignored Black origins of country music</a>.</p><p>At the ceremony itself, <a target="_blank" href="https://oxfordamerican.org/web-only/how-to-be-an-outlaw-beyonce-s-daddy-lessons">Beyoncé reportedly received "chilly treatment" backstage</a>, despite drawing <a target="_blank" href="https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/beyonce-dixie-chicks-cma-awards-website-social-media-7565538/">high ratings</a> for the network. Commenters online were similarly vexed, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/arts/music/beyonce-cma-awards-backlash.html">while others were outright racist</a>. The Chicks member Natalie Maines has since condemned the treatment Beyoncé received at the show.</p><p>"For them to disrespect her that way was disgusting," Maines <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/arts/music/dixie-chicks-gaslighter.html">told The New York Times</a> in 2020.</p><p>In her statement on Instagram, Beyoncé said the unnamed experience inspired her to dig into the history of country music.</p><p>"The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me," she said. "act ii is a result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work."</p><p>Beyoncé concluded with a clarification: "This ain't a Country album. This is a 'Beyoncé' album."</p><h2>The tracklist includes song titles like 'Ameriican Requiem,' 'The Linda Martell Show,' and 'Sweet Honey Buckin'</h2><p>Beyoncé unveiled the song titles on Wednesday, two days before the album's release. It includes 27 different tracks, including interludes</p><p>Several titles are references to outlaw tales and country tropes, like "Levii's Jeans," "Oh Lousiana," and "Desert Eagle."</p><p>"Spaghettii," a collaboration with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/beyonce-country-album-black-artists-reactions-shaboozey-tanner-adell-2024-3">Virginia-born country-rapper Shaboozey</a>, could refer to the subgenre of Western films known as "Spaghetti Westerns," popularized by Italian filmmakers in the '60s.</p><p>The song includes a spoken-word intro from Linda Martell: "Genres are a funny little concept, aren't they?" she says. "In theory, they have a simple definition that's easy to understand, but in practice, well, some may feel confined."</p> <p>Another song title, "The Linda Martell Show," is a direct nod Martell, the first Black woman to achieve commercial success in country music.</p><p>Martell only released one album: 1970's "Color Me Country." By her account, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/linda-martell-black-country-grand-ole-opry-pioneer-1050432/">her career was marred by racism</a> and she was quickly sidelined by her label in favor of white artists. As a result, her contribution to the genre has scarcely been acknowledged.</p><p>"It was very hard," Martell told Rolling Stone in 2020. "When you're playing to an all-white audience — because Lord Jesus, they <em>are</em> prejudiced — you learn to not say too much. You can carry it a little too far if you're correcting somebody. So you learn how not to do that."</p><h2>Collaborators include Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Miley Cyrus, and Post Malone</h2><p>Joining Martell are Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton (on "Smoke Hour" and "Dolly P," respectively) as the album's narrators. The three country legends take turns playing the role of a country radio station DJ.</p><p>The tracklist also includes "Jolene," a cover of Parton's beloved 1973 single. In Beyoncé's version, the lyrics are tweaked to evoke confidence and foreboding, rather than Parton's self-doubt and pleading.</p><p>"I can easily understand / Why you're attracted to my man / But you don't want this smoke, so shoot your shot with someone," Beyoncé sings.</p><p>Indeed, Parton previously revealed that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.knoxnews.com/story/entertainment/music/2024/03/11/did-beyonc-cover-dolly-partons-jolene-for-act-ii-country-album/72909922007/">Beyoncé had recorded a rendition of "Jolene"</a> and said she expected it to appear on "Cowboy Carter."</p><p>"We've kind of sent messages back and forth through the years," Parton told Tennessee outlet Knox News. "She and her mother were like fans, and I was always touched that they were fans, and I always thought she was great."</p><p>The second track, "Blackbiird," is a cover of the 1968 ballad by The Beatles.</p><p>Paul McCartney has said the song was inspired by <a target="_blank" href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/paul-mccartney-meets-women-who-inspired-beatles-blackbird-57076/">the fight for racial justice in the '60s</a>, particularly in the American South.</p><p>"I had in mind a Black woman, rather than a bird. Those were the days of the civil-rights movement, which all of us cared passionately about, so this was really a song from me to a Black woman, experiencing these problems in the States: 'Let me encourage you to keep trying, to keep your faith; there is hope,'" <a target="_blank" href="https://www.audubon.org/news/what-beatles-song-blackbird-was-really-about">McCartney told his biographer Barry Miles</a>.</p><p>"As is often the case with my things, a veiling took place," he continued. "So rather than saying, 'Black woman living in Little Rock' and be very specific, she became a bird, became symbolic, so you could apply it to your particular problem."</p><p>Four more Black female country singers — Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, Tanner Adell, and Tiera Kennedy — lend vocals to "Blackbiird."</p><p>Other duets include Miley Cyrus ("II Most Wanted") and Post Malone ("Levii's Jeans"). Shaboozey reappears on "Sweet Honey Buckin" and Beyoncé's 6-year-old daughter, Rumi Carter, is credited as a featured artist on "Protector."</p><p>Beyoncé previously confirmed the album had a few surprises in store for fans, including collaborations with "some brilliant artists who I deeply respect."</p><p>In fact, Beyoncé had already <a target="_blank" href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/beyonce-country-songs-players-robert-randolph-rhiannon-giddens-1234967138/">worked with esteemed country artists</a> for this album cycle: Rhiannon Giddens provided banjo for "Texas Hold 'Em," while Robert Randolph plays steel guitar on "16 Carriages."</p><p>Randolph said he was "hand-picked" for the project by Beyoncé herself.</p><p>"Beyoncé already had an idea of what she wanted to do," he told Rolling Stone. "She wanted to do something with some playing, with some country fire. She said she liked the way I make my instrument sound like a singer."</p><p>"It's great for her to go this route," he added. "In country music for the longest time, it almost seemed like it was supposed to be out of left field when a Black artist says, 'Hey, I'm going to do a country record.' It's crazy that the whole world doesn't understand the history of country music and fiddles, dobros, and banjos. Where do you think that stuff came from?"</p>

Beyoncé's new album 'Cowboy Carter' is finally here. Here's everything you need to know.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Your favorite brands are paying 10 times the typical price of <keyword id="6361763" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="shipping">shipping</keyword> your stuff across the ocean.</li><li>Shortages also abound.</li><li>It's all thanks to a chaos in maritime trade that's been unfolding since last year.</li></ul><p>The price for a shipping container is looking a lot like a meme stock.</p><p>The surge in shipping costs points to our shortage of semiconductors, lumber, chicken, chlorine, and, really, <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-everything-shortage-51622243982">"just about everything."</a> The pandemic broke the supply chain last year, and the shipping companies that move stuff all over the world still haven't recovered.</p><p>We rely on a complex, global supply chain. It's the reason we can get two-day shipping on ultra-cheap Wayfair furniture <a href="https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/wayfair-logistics-investment/573199/">built in Vietnam</a> or why seafood caught in the US is so cheap (much of it is actually processed <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-seafood-industry-vulnerable-to-tariffs-aimed-at-china-1533812400">in China</a> before it's shipped back here).</p><p>Ocean shipping powers our ability to buy a massive variety of inexpensive stuff. This system needs many things to function, but I'll distill those into a few important elements: </p><ul><li>Massive ocean-faring ships</li><li>Containers on the ships</li><li>Places for the ships to park so that the containers can be unloaded</li></ul><p>And, all of those things have broken at some point in the last year and a half! In fact, many of them are still broken. Here's how that happened and why the shortages are still going on.</p><h2>Our world's weird new megaships</h2><p>I am a newbie to the world of shipping. So, to better understand what's going on with our current chaos, I chatted with Simon Sundboell, a 20-year veteran of the world of container shipping based in Copenhagen. He's the founder of ocean shipping intelligence firm <a href="https://www.eesea.com">eeSea</a>. </p><p>To understand the shipping debacle, Sundboell took me back to the mid-2000s. Ocean shipping was a more fragmented industry than it is today, and manufacturers and retailers could pit these various firms against each other to win low rates. To reach economies of scale, major ocean carriers began demanding larger ships. </p><div type="image" title="World's largest container ship in the port of Hamburg" height="694" width="926" msid="83436895" hostid="261"></div><p>An analysis of <a href="https://www.hapag-lloyd.com/en/products/fleet/vessel.html">the fleet listed on the website of Hapag-Lloyd</a>, <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/news/top-10-liners-control-85-of-market-and-theyre-not-done-yet">which is the world's sixth-largest ocean carrier by volume</a>, makes that clear. I found that the average ship in the German ocean carrier's line built in the 2000s could hold just under 6,400 containers of around 20-feet long. For ships built after 2010, that number nearly <em>doubled </em>to around 11,500.</p><p>Sundboell told me that these larger ships did manage to increase profitability for <keyword id="6558700" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Maersk">Maersk</keyword>, MSC, and other major carriers - but margins were tight. Ships couldn't be less than around 90% full in order to keep these carriers in business.</p><p>It reminds me of America's <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-railroads-are-making-freight-trains-longer-and-longer-1529055002">bizarrely-long</a> <keyword id="59735" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="freight">freight</keyword> trains, which stretched to three miles long in order. On an entirely other note, chicken breasts have increased by 80% <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/chickens-four-times-bigger-than-they-used-to-be-study-1.2041561">over the past few decades</a> (and the birds themselves grow <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/bigger-chickens-bring-a-tough-new-problem-woody-breast-1459207291">much faster</a>).</p><p>In our pre-pandemic times, everything was just getting bigger and bigger! But perhaps we flew too close to the sun. </p><h2>No ships</h2><p>The first hit to the world's ocean shipping network came in early spring of last year, Sundboell told me. As the pandemic spread around the globe, it was unclear if factories in Asia would be open, or if consumers globally would even have the ability to buy durable goods. So, they started canceling sailings.</p><p>"The carriers are sitting here in March 2020, looking at a market where they have no idea whether the demand side, meaning the containers that go on their vessels, are going to drop by 5%, 15%, 30% or 50%," Sundboell told me. And recall that these companies can't profitably runt their megaships unless they're full.</p><p>As a result, carriers started to "blank," or cancel, their sailings. One major shipping alliance announced cutbacks of up to 22% on voyages between Asia and Europe <a href="https://www.joc.com/maritime-news/blanked-april-sailings-soar-carriers-prep-sharp-demand-drop_20200401.html">during the spring of 2020</a>. Between Asia and North America, carriers <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/news/qa-inside-the-early-warning-system-of-global-trade">slashed some 20% of capacity</a>. </p><h2>No parking</h2><p>A slowdown in manufacturing, and the predictions of an economic meltdown, forced the shipping world into a standstill in the early half of 2020. By the latter half, the world was starting to "turn back on."</p><p>Rather than turning frugal, consumers started spending all that cash they had tucked away for travel and restaurants on <em>stuff</em>. It's no secret people started buying treadmills, couches, and hair dye more than ever. That trend is <em>still </em>firing up the US ports that handle our imports. The Port of Los Angeles, which is the United States' largest by volume, broke its first-quarter cargo record <a href="https://www.portoflosangeles.org/references/news_041421_marchteus">this year</a>. The Port of Long Beach, the second largest, <a href="https://maritime-executive.com/article/import-boom-port-of-long-beach-breaks-another-cargo-record">handled more cargo than ever last month</a>. </p><div type="image" title="About 20 container ships wait to be unloaded in the Ports of LA and Long Beach" height="550" width="736" msid="83436899" hostid="261"></div><p>This unusual boom in volume has helped spark a massive port traffic jam. Let's narrow in on Long Beach and Los Angeles, our country's two biggest ports.</p><p>During the first half of 2020, data from the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association showed under 5% of shipments had a dwell time - the time a ship spends at a port rather than at sea - greater than five days. It steadily increased <a href="https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/california-port-congestion-los-angeles-long-beach-data/594715/">throughout the year</a>. And from October through December of that year, around a quarter of ships were waiting more than five days. </p><p>By late January 2021, some 55 vessels were crowded around the LA and Long Beach ports, reportedly sitting in the ocean for up to two weeks. FreightWaves noted that it took longer for some of these ships just to get unloaded than it was for them <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/news/trans-pacific-trade-crashes-into-max-capacity-ceiling">to cross the Pacific</a>. </p><p>Why is there a delay to unload these ships? The boom in demand is, of course, one leading reason. American ports are also seeing a shortage of labor. There's an <a href="https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/california-port-congestion-los-angeles-long-beach-data/594715/">ongoing shortage of the longshoremen</a> who who undertake the critical task of getting these containers off the ship and onto trucks or trains. Dozens were quarantined due to the coronavirus at varying points <a href="https://www.joc.com/port-news/terminal-operators/import-surge-labor-shortages-worsen-la-lb-congestion_20210112.html">last year</a>.</p><p>Above all, when something goes astray with ocean shipping, there's a major butterfly effect. A ship that's unloaded two weeks late in Los Angeles is also going to be two weeks late when it arrives back in, say, Chittagong, Bangladesh to load up on IKEA furniture. The ship before that may have been two weeks late, too, so the carrier might just cancel the ship IKEA was expecting space on, Sundboell said. Then IKEA will have to scramble for another way to move your nightstand - and potentially every order they had after that, which will now be pushed down the road.</p><h2>No containers</h2><p>Halfway into 2021, the situation has not improved.</p><p>There's another shortage giving rise to our shortages: A lack of shipping containers. Or rather, a lack of containers where they need to be. </p><p>Some of these containers are being used on ships right now, <a href="https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1403018803156459523?s=21">as Flexport's Ryan Petersen noted on Twitter this week</a>. This includes ships that might be hanging out in the ocean, waiting to dock and get unloaded. </p><p>The bigger issue is that many of these containers are not going back to Asia to get reloaded with stuff. </p><p>US exports have not kept up with imports from China, our largest trans-Pacific trading partner. According to FreightWaves SONAR data, import volume from China via ocean shipping is up 54% year-over-year. Exports have only ticked up by 4.4%. That means lots of containers are leaving Asia, but not enough have been returning there. </p><div type="image" title="Starbucks Opens First Container Store In Chinese Mainland" height="682" width="910" msid="83436900" hostid="261"></div><p>Until recently, as Petersen explained on a recent episode of Bloomberg's Odd Lots, ocean carriers didn't realize they needed to be carrying more empty containers back than ever. We're still correcting this imbalance of containers, and experts predict it will remain wonky <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/news/no-relief-global-container-shortage-likely-to-last-until-2022">until 2022</a>.</p><h2>At least the shipping scions are doing well</h2><p>The dirty secret is that the bottlenecks hampering shipping right now is bad for seemingly everyone except the shipping companies. Should these containers stay in Los Angeles instead of gliding back over to Shanghai, that only reduces ocean shipping capacity... driving freight rates ever higher, and pumping up profits for major ocean cargo lines. </p><p>Indeed, these past few years are some of the first in a while that ocean carriers <em>are </em>winning the game. <a href="https://investor.maersk.com/static-files/97a03c29-46a2-4e84-9b7e-12d4ee451361">Maersk, for example,</a> turned a profit of $2.9 billion in 2020; it <em>lost </em>money three of the four years preceding 2020. </p><p>Shipping companies didn't have the upper hand against the brands whose stuff they carry before the pandemic. Now, Zara, IKEA, and their peers are scrambling for space on one of these ships and willing to pay top dollar, Sundboell told me. </p><div type="image" title="Zara shopper" height="684" width="912" msid="83436904" hostid="261"></div><p>That's going to continue to make everything more expensive. Sundboell provided the example of Nike usually paying $2,000 for a 40-foot container full of sneakers. Now, that container might be more around $15,000 to $20,000.</p><p>A shoe or apparel manufacturer, like Nike, normally wouldn't fret about the cost of moving your goods across the ocean. "It wasn't something you'd ever worry about," Sundboell told me. "Now suddenly at $20,000, you're starting to see good that within margins that are no longer profitable to even sell it."</p><p>Should we prepare for a sneaker shortage now? Get ready, folks... </p><p><em>Let me know what you think of this latest dispatch at <a href="mailto:rpremack@insider.com">rpremack@insider.com</a>. What's the next shortage? Do you have any other ideas on what's happening in ocean shipment? Thanks for reading!</em></p>

Why the world is in a shipping crisis

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div>The speech that Benjamin Netanyahu will give in front of Congress on Tuesday has already created a number of problems that the Israeli prime minister would never have had to deal with had he simply declined House speaker John Boehner's invitation to address a joint session.</p><p>It has created a raft of issues on both sides of the US-Israel relationship, problems that were the sole creation of the speaking gig itself.</p><p>Critics allege that Netanyahu is using plaint US Republicans to <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/1/21/7866089/netanyahu-boehner-congress">undermine a sitting president's foreign policy</a>. Others allege that Boehner is trying to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/israel-is-now-a-political-wedge-issue-in-the-us-2015-2">give Netanyahu a high-profile campaign stop</a> in the hopes that one of Obama's most eloquent public adversaries remains in power after Israel's upcoming elections.</p><p>The White House views the speech as an unforgivable escalation of an already fraught relationship between US and Israeli leaders. Whether this crisis was the creation of the White House or Netanyahu is almost besides the point. Damage has already been done: Intelligence sharing is <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/US-Israel-intel-cooperation-on-Irans-nuclear-program-has-been-stopped-Ch-10-reports-392708">reportedly being curtailed</a>, and Netanyahu has been snubbed by President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State John Kerry, the last of whom is scheduled to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/kerry-zarif-begin-new-nuclear-talks/2664989.html">the same day as Netanyahu's speech</a>.</p><p>Tomorrow's speech makes little sense on the face of it, and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/raphael-ahren-netanyahus-speech-to-congress-is-enormous-gamble-2015-3">as The Times of Israel's Raphael Ahren notes</a>, it isn't clear exactly what Israel gains from Netanyahu's gambit, or even how the address could conceivably alter the course of the Iranian nuclear standoff. </p><p>But the speech makes its own kind of sense in light of Netanyahu's record as prime minister. He has switched positions on virtually every major security-related issue he's faced - except for the one he'll be speaking about to Congress.</p><p>Netanyahu was first elected prime minister in 1996, when Israelis were already wary of whether they would see a peace dividend for the Oslo Accords, signed three years earlier.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Netanyahu attempted to assuage right-wing fears over what the accords would mean for Israel's national identity and strategic depth, most notably by reversing his predecessor Shimon Peres's decision and opening a controversial tunnel running along the base of the Temple Mount in 1996, sparking deadly rioting.</span></p><p>But Netanyahu also signed the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_Concerning_the_Redeployment_in_Hebron">1997 Hebron Protocol</a>, an agreement that required Israel to redeploy its military forces in the namesake West Bank city, which is widely regarded as the second-holiest place in Judaism. </p><p>Netanyahu's triangulation continued during his second stint as prime minister, which began in 2009. His government has authorized thousands of new residential units in West Bank communities, and provocatively <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/world/middleeast/10biden.html">announced new building licenses</a> during a US vice presidential visit to Jerusalem in 2010.</p><p>At the same time, Netanyahu eventually agreed to <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/netanyahu-declares-10-month-settlement-freeze-to-restart-peace-talks-1.3435">the first West Bank construction freeze in Israel's history</a> as a precondition for entering proximity talks with the Palestinians in 2009 - talks that went nowhere.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Netanyahu has been cagey in committing his government to a "two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, suggesting he would only agree to the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/world/middleeast/15mideast.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0">existence of a de-militarized Palestinian</a> state that agreed to Israeli annexation of certain sections of the West Bank. But his government agreed to release <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israel-frees-more-palestinian-prisoners/2013/12/30/4c3bd7fc-7189-11e3-bc6b-712d770c3715_story.html">scores of high-value Palestinian prisoners</a> just to sustain peace talks in 2013 and the following year - once again providing a concession to the Palestinians just to enter into fruitless peace talks.</p><p>The Israeli prime minister <a href="http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-liberman-splits-likud-yisrael-beitenu-partnership-1000952301">allowed a rival center-right faction to leave his Likud Party</a> and <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Netanyahu-fires-Deputy-Defense-Minister-Danon-who-was-highly-critical-of-Gaza-strategy-362930">fired a deputy defense minister</a> rather than order a full-scale military operation against Hamas over the summer, only committing to a large-scale operation <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.603472">after a multiday rocket bombardment</a> on Israel's densely populated coastal plane. He also authorized the release of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Shalit_prisoner_exchange">1,027 prisoners</a> to secure the freedom of Hamas hostage Gilad Shalit.</p><p>Netanyahu has often sparred with Turkey but caved to longstanding US and Turkish demands to <a href="http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/22/17416275-israels-netanyahu-apologizes-to-turkey-over-deadly-flotilla-raid?lite">apologize for an Israeli commando raid</a> that killed nine Turkish citizens attempting to infiltrate the Gaza Strip <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/What-is-the-IHH">on behalf of a Hamas-linked charity</a>. </p><h3>One priority</h3><p>Netanyahu has a highly oppositional relationship with Obama, but has eventually accommodated nearly all of the US president's demands, from the Turkey apology to the settlement freeze to entering into negotiations with the Palestinians to refraining from launching bombing runs on Iran's nuclear program.</p><p>Just about the only constant in Netanyahu's career has been his full-throated opposition to Iran's nuclear ambitions. He raised warnings about Iran's nuclear infrastructure <a href="https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/02/brief-history-netanyahu-crying-wolf-iranian-nuclear-bomb/">as early as 1995</a>, and warned in 2009 that Tehran was <a href="http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/02/09TELAVIV457.html">one or two years away</a> from being able to build a nuclear weapon. </p><p>Later, Netanyahu's rhetoric on the Iranian program helped keep up pressure on Tehran by appearing to push the US toward a more assertive role in penalizing the country for the growth of its illicit nuclear program. The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who is a persistent critic of Israel's prime minister, credited him with playing the bad cop to Obama, <a href="have%20accomplished%20something%20extraordinary%20together%20over%20the%20past%20two%20years.">writing in 2012</a> that the leaders "<span>have accomplished something extraordinary together over the past two years."</span></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Netanyahu's consistency on the issue stems from a longstanding sense that a nuclear Iran is the only actor that can threaten Israel's existence. Over the past 60 years, Israel has defeated a series of conventional and unconventional military threats to the state's existence.</p><p>Netanyahu reasons that a nuclear Iran would put the military force most threatening to Israel - Lebanese Hezbollah, the Iranian-supported Shi'ite terrorist group - under Tehran's nuclear umbrella, amounting to a security and political challenge categorically different from anything Israel has faced up to this point.</p><p>Netanyahu believes that it is his historic duty to do everything in his power to prevent Iran from even putting itself in a position to acquire a nuclear weapon. He does not want to go down at the prime minister that fumbled the issue that he's personally deemed most pressing to the survival of the world's only Jewish state.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>If Tuesday's speech backfires it won't be the only time that this sense of responsibility has led the Israeli prime minister astray. Netanyahu's <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/27/us-un-assembly-israel-iran-idUSBRE88Q0GI20120927">cartoon bomb stunt</a> at the UN in 2012 galvanized <keyword id="6356001" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="international">international</keyword> opposition to Iran's nuclear program. But it undermined Israel's position by communicating the country's exact weaponization breakout red lines to Tehran - limits on highly enriched uranium accumulation that Iran has been careful not to surpass.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>But Netanyahu's mistakes were made out of an unerring sense of mission.  And at this point, the leader who is arguably most responsible for putting the Iranian nuclear program on the international agenda believes that the situation is dire enough to warrant a move as risky as the Congressional speech.</p><p>Iran is the issue Netanyahu cares most about and by far the issue on which he's been the most resistant to compromise. If tomorrow's speech turns out to be a mistake, it will be one made in good faith - and out of intense and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/status-of-iran-nuclear-negotiations-2015-2">arguably</a> <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-is-reportedly-willing-to-make-another-huge-nuclear-concession-to-iran-2015-2">warranted</a> concern over where the negotiating process with Tehran is heading.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trailer-point-and-shoot-documentary-libyan-revolution-2015-2">This 26-year-old from Baltimore took a 35,000-mile road trip and ended up fighting in the Libyan revolution</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="szNGZoczpV6FOp_YiVp_j5fNW4DvFIZ8" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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