Editorial Review of
Stratfor
[Category: Emerging Markets Analysis]
Stratfor began humbly, as a daily email bulletin on world affairs combining endearing intelligence chatter ("highly placed sources inform us the Syrians are about to...") with neo-realist conspiracy theories ("Russia and China will form an alliance to counterbalance U.S. efforts..."). As far as anyone could tell, the purpose was to sell a piece of software to reformat your hard drive.
But a few months on, Stratfor suddenly started producing really insightful stuff. The Company had over the months built an immense list for its free email newsletter, and, in the dotcom days, such lists were easily translatable into ready cash. This ready cash bought a staff of competent, well-trained analysts. Today Stratfor delivers daily online analysis ("intelligence") of global news for a subscription price of a few hundred bucks. The predilection for quoting unnamed well-placed sources remains, but in general, the analysts know what they're talking about, and it's cheap.
Updated April 28, 2004I used to dismiss Stratfor as the lunatic ravings of a bunch of former spooks. I remember in particular their analysis of the Egypt Air crash in New York a few years back. According to Strafor, it was surely the work of terrorists firing RPGs from Queens. But Stratfor has definitely gotten more serious. I've used them several times for political analysis of various obscure countries. They have particularly good Central Asia insights. Once and a while, the lunatic ravings will pop up again, but it's easy to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Posted by: Sunil Gupta on July 26, 2004All user reviews posted to Countryrisk.com reflect the personal opinion of the authors and not necessarily the opinion of their company/organization or of Countryrisk.com.