Austin-based Stratfor Attempts to Make Smart Money on Global Intelligence

On November 22, 1999, an Austin company called Stratfor sent a bold e-mail to 15,000 recipients around the globe. Its subject line: "Philippine President's Days Are Numbered." In the brisk prose that has become its trademark, Stratfor's evaluation of the political situation in Manila contained bad news for the fortunes of actor-turned politician Joseph Estrada. "Whether removed by force or by the broad coalition arrayed against him," the message concluded, "Estrada is unlikely to fulfill his six-year term in office." The forecast was part of a "Global Intelligence Update" (or GIU) that Stratfor produced daily and sent to its registered subscribers for free.

In Manila, the forecast was used by anti-Estrada forces to mobilize popular opposition. Meanwhile, Estrada supporters dismissed the Stratfor analysis as mere Internet dross, unattributed and unsourced. Most dangerously, they said, no one had paid for it. "It's like the crank predictions about the end of the world, which we read from time to time," Senator Francisco Tatad told the Manila Standard. "It is rubbish, pure and simple."

Stratfor -- the company's name is a contraction of "Strategic Forecasting" -- was doing for the Philippines what it does for every region of the world: vacuuming up all far-flung bits of information from Internet sources, analyzing them...

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