The Decision Advantage

In this episode of the Stratfor podcast, a conversation about who pays for the coastal damage done by climate change. The 2019 hurricane season is likely to go down in history books as one of the most costly of the decade in loss of life, loss of infrastructure, loss of property and loss of coastal land. It may take longer than a decade for the Bahamas to recover from Hurricane Dorian. Houston is...

How likely is the United States to be laid low by a cyber attack? What can you do to protect your company from a devastating ransomware or hack? In this episode of the Stratfor "Pen and Sword" podcast with Fred Burton, Robert Knake, co-author of The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats. In the book, Knake and fellow author Richard A. Clarke a...

Mat Best was an Army Ranger. He’s an entrepreneur. He’s a passionate advocate for veterans. He’s a YouTube phenomenon. And he’s now a best selling author. Best’s memoir, “Thank you for My Service,” is a no-holds barred, highly irreverent and oftentimes inappropriate recounting of his experiences during 5 combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thank You for My Service is a compelling read and contin...

When Sean Parnell returned from fighting for the US in Afghanistan, he wanted to honor the efforts of his platoon. So he wrote a book. He called it Outlaw Platoon. That book was a runaway bestseller. The next book he wrote, Man of War, jumped from memoir to fiction, but his mission was the same: to honor his comrades. In his latest thriller, All Out War,  book, Eric Steele addresses two fundamenta...

Fans who have already binge watched Season Two of Nextflix's series, Mindhunter can still get their dose of solving true crime with a new book from the real life Mindhunter, former FBI criminal profiler, John Douglas. The new book, "The Killer Across the Table" digs into four cases from the Mindhunter's case files. Co-author, Mark Oleshaker says each crime in the new book is notably different from...

When James Grady wrote, "Six Days of the Condor" in 1973, he had no idea his work of spy fiction would see repetition in the real world. But from an international assassination to a complete government-run espionage department, that's what happened. More than 40 years after the book was first published. with a TV series and several sequels to boot behind him, Grady says, his hero is still human. "...

In this episode of the Stratfor podcast, we hear from Zahra Hankir, a journalist based in Beirut, Lebanon, about a collection of essays she has compiled. The essays are a unique - and unprecedented - look into the lives of 19 women journalists who report for western media from and about the Middle Eastern and Arab world. From breaking with traditional female roles to reporting on civil war and its...

In this podcast, Stratfor's South Asia Analyst, Faisel Pervaiz, speaks with Ambika Vishwanath about India's water challenges. From floods to drought to later monsoons, India has been struggling to provide adequate water supplies to its 1.3 Billion citizens. Factor in the tensions between India and Pakistan and water-sharing agreement between the rivals known as Indus Water Treaty, which dictates t...

An interview with Mark Greaney (author of the Gray Man series of thrillers) and Lt. Col. H. Ripley Rawlings IV. Together they have written a gripping and realistic action thriller in which World War III emerges as a conflict between the West and Russia. In this novel, Russia creates a three-pronged front - testing the US military capabilities - in a gamble to lay claim to a rare mineral mine that...

Continuing a conversation with Stratfor's Reva Goujon and Russell Gold about his new book, Superpower!, the two dig into the impacts of climate change on hydrocarbon-based and renewable energies, energy subsidies and even the 2020 race for US President.

When Neil Armstrong announced that the Eagle had landed on July, 20, 1969, the world listened. The first moon landing in July, 1969, was the culmination of a presidential resolution firmly anchored in a wartime -- albeit a cold war -- objective. Far less known, until now, are the many military plots and schemes aimed at countering the Soviets that never made it off the drawing board--even though m...

In what Stratfor's Vice President of Global Analysis, Reva Goujon calls, "required reading," Wall Street Journal Energy Reporter, Russell Gold, tells the story of Michael Skelly, who foresaw an energy transition in the U.S from fossil-based to clean power.  The following description comes from Russell Gold's Amazon book page for SuperPower! One Man's Quest to transform American Energy. Skelly, "an...

There are studies that indicate that the speed at which constantly evolving geopolitical events affect people, businesses and nations - from diplomacy to international security to societies and everything in between - and how much information is available to consume - can make individuals feel bombarded, or attacked. That can cause stress or anxiety and have real physical health effects. But too l...

On December 21, 1988, a plane full of college students, government workers and professionals traveling home for the holidays from London to New York exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. All on board and 11 people on the ground were killed. The investigation spread over hundreds of square miles. The evidence was blown to smithereens. Richard Marquise was the investigator in charge of finding out what...

"Domestic terrorism" is a phrase that has had its fair share of US headlines in the years since 2001 and the Al Qaeda terror attacks. We've all read reports of bombings, mail attacks using fire, biological weapons. And the dramatic death tolls from dozens and dozens of mass shootings. But domestic terrorism was not hatched in the wake of foreign attacks. It predates online radicalization and the U...

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 hugg...

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'...

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 publish...

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 espio...

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 i...

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 i...

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 dis...

"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...

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...