I understand the sentiment, but you have too high expectations for here. Everything but programming is going to be pop-sci, pop-geopol, pop-econ, etc. in general. But it's odd you have such a distaste for Zeihan, because it sounds like you were doing similar work, as he was a Stratfor analyst. Zeihan is pop-geopol palatable, assuredly, and he keeps getting certain details wrong that invokes Gell-Mann amnesia. But he's better than 95% of the mostly silly international relations talking heads, and for that I'm grateful.
Most people in the policy world who want to have a tangible impact have to work with credible organizations that have a direct impact on policymaking (Govt Agencies, Defense, Lobbying firms, the hill, top tier NGOs and Think Tanks).
Stratfor isn't one of those. It's founder George Friedman has had a notoriously horrible track record in the IR space
For example, in the 90s he predicted Japan would start a war with the US and did a massive press junket about this from 1991-1996. Turns out, the opposite happened, yet his "analysis" had a massive negative impact on US-Japan relations and impacted foreign discourse in the 1992, 1994, and 1996 elections.
The big issue is no person with credible domain experience wants to work at Stratfor. If you have years of policymaking experience, there are multiple other better paying career options than a firm located in Austin TX - about as far from politics as they can be.
They shut down their DC office in 2001 after they lost all credibility, and pivoted to a bit of consulting (think McKinsey type work) before pivoting to thought leadership and media junkets.
They're about as credible as IDC or Gartner are about technology.
> better than 95% of the mostly silly international relations talking heads
Who and where are you getting your sources? If you're watching/reading Cable News or a subset of niche blogs, you are completely out of the loop of where the actual conversations and discussions are happening.
I can give you some actual credible sources that people in the field use. Most people in the space don't really participate on CNN or the like.
And if you are going to pull the "Russia Invasion of Ukraine in 2022" example, multiple of the top think tanks and NGOs publicly broadcasted that threat half a year before it actually happened, but they weren't invited to CNN or Fox to discuss.
> you have too high expectations for here. Everything but programming is going to be pop-sci, pop-geopol, pop-econ, etc. in general
I wouldn't care if I wasn't seeing conversations veering to that on a near daily basis here on HN. I want to nerd out about Golang and the business of tech (that's why I'm on here), but seeing entire echo chambers of people talking out of their ass about stuff needed to be rectified and I decided to start jumping into those conversations, but it's basically yelling into a vacuum. Hopefully YC cuts HN now that most of the old guard has retired. Bookface is nowhere as bad as HN.
> Who and where are you getting your sources? If you're watching/reading Cable News or a subset of niche blogs, you are completely out of the loop of where the actual conversations and discussions are happening.
I’m not watching cable news, or getting it from from the rest of the niche media cranks. That’s what I’m talking about the 95%. That Zeihan threads the needle between not being the brightest most connected in DC, but giving geopol info better than most of the crap there is. Since I’m a layman, I personally have an info diet from Zeihan, Caspian Report, Dmitri Alperovitch, and the DC think tank Institute for the Study of War, a long with the occasional book like Prisoners of Geography and World Order.
> And if you are going to pull the "Russia Invasion of Ukraine in 2022" example,
Would never. My info diet, kudos to Dmitri Alperovitch, made me almost certain of this back in Dec 21, a few months before.
Of course Bookface wouldn’t be as bad, it’s further filtered.
You should give me some good sources to compare to then, since your answer of 200 think tank list by a university, whose report ended in 2019, includes ISW at #92 in the US and Alperovitch's DC think tank, Silverado, was started in 2021.
Stick with the top 10 globally, and then maybe the top 4-5 per region. Start reading books published by people affiliated to those think tanks, and recognize that OSINT is largely dead after 2022.
Though not involved in this particular discussion I would love to know your credible sources so I can better keep in the know.
I’ve only recently ventured back to focusing on current events after a 2 year nihilistic fallout with my perception of modern media and I’m desperately trying to get a foothold on some real solid reporting.
> recently ventured back to focusing on current events
Don't. It's completely useless. You are not in a position to make a change so it's completely useless. Grassroots activism almost never works without explicit backing from someone with some power.
That said, if you still want to waste your time and mental sanity, for international relations I'd use the list provided by this prof at UPenn who's entire professorship is about ranking think tanks [0].
I'd also recommend reading this guide on how to evaluate think tanks from Harvard Expos 10 [1]
I see your outlook isn’t much different from mine before I separated myself from the space. More philosophically than technically. Nevertheless I appreciate you providing those sources.
Keep doing what you can and not stressing over what you can’t.
