The Decision Advantage

One of the most memorable images from June, 2019 was that taken by a Dallas Morning News Photographer. It shows a man in a black armored, pocketed vest with a black cap, face covering, green clothes, black boots and a large black gun about to enter the Earle Cabell federal courthouse in Dallas, Texas.   Another was of sobbing survivors of a mass shooting at the Virginia Beach municipal center hugging each other on a bright, sunny day. Only the shooter was killed in the Dallas event. 12 people died at the scene of the Virginia Beach event. In a recent column for Stratfor Worldview, VP of Tactical Analysis, Scott Stewart, noted that while incidents of workplace violence and mass public attacks are a persistent concern, taking security measures ahead of time is a critical step toward avoiding attacks.  He spoke with Chief Security Officer, Fred Burton.

Brad Thor is the best-selling author of the Scot Harvath series of thrillers. "You can go to Backlash never having read a Brad Thor book before," Thor told Stratfor's Chief Security Officer and host of the Pen And Sword podcast, "And in my book is Scot Harvath, who's American's number one operative...This hostile nation decides 'this guy gets in our way way too often. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna grab him, wring him dry. We're gonna get  all the intel we can get out of him and then we're gonna kill him.'"  Well, needless to say, Harvath is not amused. That's page one. And the action continues right until the end. 

The United States has been militarily engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq for almost a generation. For many Americans, those wars have been defining elements of their lives. For others, events far away that simply do not affect them. In what Booklist has called a “searing, contemplative, and unforgettable memoir… perhaps the finest writing about the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts that has been published to date,” former Marine Elliot Ackerman returns to the places he fought to learn the names of those he fought against.

We’re continuing this episode of Stratfor Talks to focus on true crime, espionage and mysteries. That’s because Chief Security Officer Fred Burton loves the genre and we can’t get him to read anything else! These episodes have developed a special name, “The Pen and Sword”. On today’s episode: David Austin, the author of the thriller: Tehran’s Vengeance. This is the story of what happens when espionage is TOO effective -- and causes an international incident that explodes into an all-out assault.

In this episode, Stratfor Security experts Fred Burton and Scott Stewart discuss the intricacies of corporate espionage risk and a recent column on security by Stewart. Hostile actors seeking to steal critical corporate information will go wherever that information is located and use whatever tactics needed to obtain it. When a company considers its espionage risk purely on where the information is located, it can lead to security blind spots. That is why, our experts say, corporate security programs must take a global approach to identify, segregate and protect critical data in every corner of the world where it can be found.

It’s been 30 years since a group of young protestors faced down military tanks in China’s Tiananmen Square to protest for Democracy. This, of course, was a battle lost. 2019 also marks another anniversary - one which remains relevant today as the U.S. and China renegotiate their relationship and its balance of power. In 1919, a book was published without which Stratfor would likely not exist. It is Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction, written by Halford Mackinder. It’s a book that resonates with Stratfor’s VP of Strategic Analysis, Rodger Baker. And also with scholar of history and author, Dr. Jeremi Suri.

It's been more than three decades since, in the deep dark night April 26, 1986, the number 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant failed. The nuclear disaster released heavily radioactive gas into the atmosphere for days. The number of people it killed is unclear to this day, because the event from that day, and to some extent even today, remains shrouded in mystery. At the time of the disaster, it took the Soviet authorities weeks to inform citizens of what had happened. Chernobyl was long considered the worst nuclear failure, unmatched for devastation and contamination. Until the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns. On this episode of the Stratfor Talks podcast, we discuss the accident, how it changed the world's view of nuclear, the safety constraints that make it one of the most costly ways to produce energy, and how nuclear fits into a transition to low-or-no emission energy.  Hosted by Ben Sheen, with Eugene Chausovsky and Rebecca Keller.  

"In a perfect world, the State Department is able to work out the conflicts that we're having with other nations. And the second option, traditionally, historically, is war. So only after 1947, after the national security act was this third option put into play, which is the CIA's hidden hand. So in essence if diplomacy fails and war is unwise, call on the CIA's Special Activities Division." Those are the words that investigative journalist and author Annie Jacobsen uses to describe the work of the CIA's paramilitary arm. And that work is the subject of Jacobsen's latest, Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins. In this episode of Stratfor Talks' Pen and Sword, host Fred Burton speaks with Jacobsen about her inspiration, how she conducted her research and what she learned about the element of U.S. foreign policy payed out in secret. 

In this episode of Stratfor Talks, Stratfor analysts, Emily Hawthorne and Rodger Baker discuss what we know about the escalation between the US and Iran, what is not known and what Stratfor forecasts for the next few weeks.  Open questions include the role of Houthis, Israel and the United Arab Emirates. 

On this episode, we’re checking in on the general election underway in India. Some 900 million people in India are eligible to vote in 2019. Think about that. And think about the country’s current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. He and his party are projected to win when the final vote tally is complete on May 23. But there are so many issues at play in this election, we asked Stratfor’s South Asia Analyst Faisel Pervaiz to provide guidance.