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Is Stratfor a "Joke"?
daveschroeder writes with an opinion piece that seems to differ from the usual thinking on the Wikileaks release of Stratfor emails: "Max Fisher writes in The Atlantic: 'The corporate research firm has branded itself as a CIA-like "global intelligence" firm, but only Julian Assange and some over-paying clients are fooled. [...] The group's reputation among foreign policy writers, analysts, and practitioners is poor; they are considered a punchline more often than a source of valuable information or insight. [...] So why do Wikileaks and their hacker source Anonymous seem to consider Stratfor, which appears to do little more than combine banal corporate research with media-style freelance researcher arrangements, to be a cross between CIA and Illuminati? The answer is probably a combination of naivete and desperation.'"
That's a pretty wafer thin opinion piece. Sure, Stratfor seems like a mess, but I think the most telling aspect of this whole fiasco is that we actually believe an intelligence company could be so moronic. That says a lot about the public's perception of government intelligence, or lack thereof, if imbeciles like Stratfor are actually being paid to provide services.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
... is what this article is.
... the mindset of the intelligence industry. It shows there is an element of self supported dependencies involved. This is not unlike addicts, such as Alcoholic and durg abuses etc. But on th eup side of thise there are help groups such as AA, OA, MA, SPA etc.. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_twelve-step_groups ) where they have buddy systems because once you are so caught up in an addiction it is difficult to stay objective about getting yourself out of the addiction, hence the buddy system comes into play... better objectivity.
So, perhaps we need such a group for the Intelligence Industry, lets call it IA or better yet lets stay silent about the intelligence part and simply call the help group Anonymous.
Yeah... thats the ticket...
Can we stop writing checks to them with tax payer money?
Work bio at MMWD
Stratfor's a joke, but the powers that be take them seriously. That makes them a serious threat. Wikileaks, exposing this joke, helps to diffuse that threat. This is not complicated.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I was going through the Stratfor leak to assist in crowdsourcing research on the material. I found predominantly old news, employees sending each other e-mail links of dated internet articles, and dingbattily off-base novice assessments of geopolitical maneuverings and trends. The rest was industry-specific minutae ("How does [situation] affect the [goods] market in [country]?") and a few Excel spreadsheets of personally-identifiable employee and contact data. Stratfor appears to be what happens when someone with more money than brains gets an inflated sense of self-importance and decides it would be cool to run a corporate cloak-and-dagger firm.
Yes Stratfor is a joke. But like most jokes, the problem was that people were willing to take it seriously. Worse, Stratfor's intelligence and comprehension of geopolitics was still light-years ahead of the average U.S. citizen's.
A much better source of intel - though hardly ideal - for the curious would be at Benjamin Fulford's leak site. Each Monday morning new updates arrive that are behind a paywall. They are then repeated for free on various blogs within hours.
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
Of course, some of us regard Stratfor as a joke with no tangible wit or discernible punchline. This does not impede idiots with more money than sense of humor from buying its output. Much the same can be said for The Atlantic, unfortunately...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
That's what spy operations are, though.
Wikileaks is a platform that hosts the leaks they are sent to. Posting them is in no way a political statement of them. From the site:
They don't exaggerate anything, merely state the contents of the leak.
I see Stratfor calling itself the "Shadow CIA". But is there really any connection to the CIA? From what I've seen they mostly market themselves to private industry, perhaps they have some subscribers in Washington but the connection seems casual at best.
If my CEO believes in astrology or that the earth is only 6000 years old, I may think he's crazy. But I still need to know who has his ear.
Have gnu, will travel.
Salesmen often have no special skills or knowledge other than the ability to get people to buy their products. The identify people with a need, or those people come to them. Those are leads. Those leads are qualified and then a sales attempt is made. People then buy those products. The fact that Stratfor is useless is nothing weird or strange. The customers (government or private) were sold a product that they thought suited a need they had. The sales people probably built a convincing case for a subscription to be bought and the everyone proceeded to think it was doing something for them. Like many sales pitches, it probably hit more on the potential of a service that was described in the way they described Stratfor, as opposed to the reality of just what they could provide.
Stratfor does sound like a joke. I'm still trying to figure out what the conspiracy is. Like the author in TFA said, their super-secret bribed sources are equivalent to freelance writers. Even before this piece, I was thinking to myself, "exactly what is being provided here that is in any way strange or illegal?"
The only story here is that there are a lot of people paying a lot of money for a crappy product.
and one who had their information released I feel I can make some credible comments on the quality of Stratfor.
The primary use of Stratfor was background, especially in regions I was not familar or required too much attention to stay on top of. Second was the channelling of event and other information from various open source media, including local/domestic. Third was their analysis. Whether done by themself, others, or some combination, they usually got the broad picture correct and were good at breaking down economic data. However, Stratfor was poor when it came to near and medium term predictions on both economic and political events. Marginally better on military stuff.
I was a general subscriber, nothing 'special' ever requested. For the price, they were worth it. If you timed things properly you could have it annually for less than a sub to the WSJ and again, from an informational gathering standpoint they did a decent job. Perhaps a lot was open source and/or available if you really wanted to look, etc but that is exactly why you are paying a firm like stratfor - to do the searching and collating for you and give some kind of summary. They save time and effort.
posted anonymously for obvious reasons
From TFA:
A friend who works in intelligence once joked that Stratfor is just The Economist a week later and several hundred times more expensive. As of 2001, a Stratfor subscription could cost up to $40,000 per year.
I think it costs around $100-200 per year, about the same as the Economist. As a reader of both, and much more, Stratfor is an excellent source of original, well-written analysis that you can't find elsewhere. Certainly calling them a private CIA is an exaggeration (I imagine their budget is a little smaller too), and certainly they have flaws (their obsession with geopolitical analysis, for example), but they are worth reading.
If you have a strong interest in international affairs, try them; currently their services are free:
http://stratfor.com/analysis
http://stratfor.com/situation-report
For example, here is an excellent explanation (now slightly out of date) of the groups resisting Assad in Syria:
http://stratfor.com/analysis/syria-opposition-struggles-gain-foreign-support
That's abiout what we have here. One guy, Fisher, has picked up the fact that another guy Drezner, doesn't have a high opinion of Stratfor,, though he has a high opinion of himself and constantly quotes himself in his own articles in Foreign Policy. Based on this one guy's opinion, Drezner, Fisher concludes that EVERYONE thinks Stratfor is "a joke," which is complete hyperbole. And now 100 slashdot posters, the majority of whom have no idea what Stratfor really does and have never been on their web site, get in line to repeat the same thing.
Certainly Stratfor is not as smart as Stratfor thinks Stratfor is. Their analyses are somewhat uneven. Their "Above the Tearline" segments, for example, are a poster child for simplistic thinking. On the other hand, their analysis of the US Navy and its deployments is as close to perfect as you can realistically get--FAR better than something like Debkafile, for example, that routinley invents destroyer fleets plying the waters of the Indian Ocean. They have a lot of short "quickie" articles you could probably get for yourself on the Web, but their in-depth articles are well written, comprehensive, and insightful.
They do have people on the ground all over the world. You can call them journalists instead of analysts if you want, but their coverage is far more insightful than a pool reporter for Fox or CNN. At least these guys have studied their subjects rather than spent their time blow drying their hair.
If you quote Stratfor there is always someone to jump up and down and proclaim them and you worthless, but if you neglect to mention Stratfor is your source, suddenly what you say is considered pure genius.
And they are hardly ruined. Yeah, the script kiddies walked all over them this time. They may have gotten 5 million emails (Really?) but this is no Climategate or Private Manning. And Stratfor will emerge stronger for it.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
I've been observing Stratfor - plus several other similar operations - since the late 1990's
I've subscribed (paid subscriptions) to many of them
I do so to gauge the correctness of their so-called "intel reports" as well as learn new and interesting "stuffs" that I'm not aware of
For Startfor, for the subjects that I'm very familiar with, I would say that they are correct about 20-23% of the time
For the subjects that I'm not familiar with, however, I won't be able to comment
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Conspiracy Theories 101 - any information that conflicts with the conspiracy theory must be ignored and classified as disinformation propagated by the conspirators.
That's exactly the main problem with conspiracy theories, which makes them unfalsifiable and thus unscientific.
(basically, if there's no way to prove it wrong, there's no way to prove it right either)
Also, enough exposure might make you think _you're_ the crazy one for not wanting to believe their odd ideas.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Stratfor and similar companies are basically specialized newspapers, much heavier on analysis than usual, with aggressive marketing departments. I have never been able to understand why Anonymous has such a stiffie for them-- its like Friedman ran over someone's dog, or something.
As for the accuracy, I won't dispute that, because I've found some rather questionable statements in areas I'm familiar with. (Although I will raise an eyebrow at the precision implied-- 23%? Really?) It's not meaningful unless you can compare it to other ratings for other news services.
And finally, I've seen Stratfor make at least grudging motions toward something virtually no other news service ever does-- they'll haul out last year's projections and see where they went wrong and try to explain why. Granted, they don't do a great job at this, but it's a refreshing effort, like when your kid finally learns to say please and thank-you.