The Decision Advantage

On August 23, major news outlets reported that Wagner Group Head Yevgeny Prigozhin was believed to be aboard a flight that crashed in Russia. In this episode of Essential Geopolitics, RANE Eurasia Analyst Matthew Orr discusses everything we know about the plane crash so far and shares his insights into the potential implications for Russia, the Wagner Group, and Belarus.

RANE is a global risk intelligence company that delivers risk and security professionals access to critical insights, analysis and support to ensure business continuity and resilience for our clients. For more information about RANE's risk management solutions, visit www.ranenetwork.com.

From grain flows through the Black Sea to strategic minerals bottlenecks to strategic competition over advanced semiconductors, supply chain disruptions are often some of the most prominent and attention-grabbing examples of geopolitical risk on business operations. But the impacts are often not quite as attention-grabbing, simply adding more friction to the complexities of global trade. At the center of it all sits the global shipping industry, the connective tissue of global trade and commerce. It is there that one set of risks can add reverberating and compounding impacts across seemingly unconnected sectors or even geographies. In this episode of the Applied Geopolitics podcast, Rodger Baker, the director of the Stratfor Center for Applied Geopolitics at RANE, speaks with Mr. Punit Oza about some of the ways geopolitical risk impacts the global shipping industry.

Mr. Punit Oza is a Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Maritime & Port Authority of Singapore Academy and an Affiliated Research Fellow & Guest Lecturer at Singapore Management University, where he lectures on Geopolitical risks & their impact on shipping & trade flows. Mr. Oza has more than 30 years of experience in Dry Bulk Shipping, and now heads his own company, Maritime NXT, Singapore, focused on the developments in the maritime space. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers and currently the Vice Chairman of the Singapore Branch of the Institute.

RANE is a global risk intelligence company that delivers risk and security professionals access to critical insights, analysis and support to ensure business continuity and resilience for our clients. For more information about RANE's risk management solutions, visit www.ranenetwork.com.

On July 25, China replaced recently appointed Foreign Minister Qin Gang with CCP Foreign Policy Chief Wang Yi. This followed Qin’s one-month absence from the public eye, leading many foreign analysts to speculate about the reasons for the shake-up and its impacts for China’s relations with the world. In this episode of Essential Geopolitics, RANE’s Asia Pacific Analyst Chase Blazek walks us through the events leading up to Qin’s absence and the potential impact this will have on China’s relations with the world. 

RANE is a global risk intelligence company that delivers risk and security professionals access to critical insights, analysis and support to ensure business continuity and resilience for our clients. For more information about RANE's risk management solutions, visit www.ranenetwork.com.

In this episode, David Lawrence, co-founder of RANE, speaks with Teague Egan about the work his company is doing in the lithium industry.

Teague is the Founder and CEO at EnergyX, a clean energy tech company that’s developing efficient and sustainable technology to aid the extraction and production process for lithium.

Teague is a serial entrepreneur, and has previously started businesses in entertainment. He is also the inventor of EnergyDNA – a patented multi-component graphene textile fiber technology. 

RANE is a global risk intelligence company that delivers risk and security professionals access to critical insights, analysis and support to ensure business continuity and resilience for our clients. For more information about RANE's risk management solutions, visit www.ranenetwork.com.

One of the strengths of geopolitical analysis is the ability to move above the fray of current politics. As a tool of assessment, geopolitics often works best in assessing strategic balances, drivers, and constraints. But while nations are often the discussed unit of action, reality requires us to understand and input the role of decision-makers, organizations, and institutions into the calculations, particularly in shorter time frames or narrower geographic scopes. In this more focused approach, we can consider two simultaneous ideas - “objective” geopolitics, and perspective geopolitics. Actions will be driven more often not by what is, but by what is perceived. The results, however, are much more influenced by what is, than by what one wishes. In this episode of the Applied Geopolitics podcast, Rodger Baker, the director of the Stratfor Center for Applied Geopolitics at RANE, speaks with Dr. Kenneth Dekleva about his work in leadership analysis and forensic psychiatry.

Dr. Kenneth Dekleva is a practicing psychiatrist and Senior Fellow at the George HW Bush Foundation for US-China Relations.  From 2002 to 2016, he served as a senior U.S. diplomat and regional medical officer/psychiatrist with the U.S. Department of State, mostly overseas, but also in a leadership role (from 2013 to 2015) as director of the U.S. State Department’s worldwide diplomatic mental health program, providing mental health support to 60,000 U.S. diplomats and family members based overseas and in the United States. He has published widely in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, The Hill, The Cipher Brief, 38 North and The Diplomat, and has given numerous presentations in academic, private sector, and U.S. government settings in the field of leadership analysis, including profiles of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. He has also given media interviews to CNN, National Public Radio, Intelligence Matters, and Background Briefing.

RANE is a global risk intelligence company that delivers risk and security professionals access to critical insights, analysis and support to ensure business continuity and resilience for our clients. For more information about RANE's risk management solutions, visit www.ranenetwork.com.

In this episode of Beyond COVID, our experts analyze recent COVID numbers and compare the virus to other existing coronaviruses. 

Dr. Fred Southwick is an infectious disease specialist at the University of Florida's College of Medicine, and Dr. Bill Lang is an expert in public health responses to biological incidents. Our host, David Lawrence, is the founder of RANE.

RANE is a global risk intelligence company that delivers risk and security professionals access to critical insights, analysis and support to ensure business continuity and resilience for our clients. For more information about RANE's risk management solutions, visit www.ranenetwork.com.

Cyprus is pushing for a resumption of negotiations with Turkey for a settlement on the divided island, seeking to capitalize on recent momentum towards a rapprochement between the EU and Ankara. The main idea is to link a potential revival of Turkey's EU accession process to the progression of talks for an eventual future reunification of Cyprus, which has long been divided into two Greek and Turkish-Cypriot entities. Although both sides seem willing to resume negotiations, significant constraints will have to be addressed before a solution can be achieved. RANE’s Europe Analyst Matteo Ilardo offers his insights. 

RANE is a global risk intelligence company that delivers risk and security professionals access to critical insights, analysis and support to ensure business continuity and resilience for our clients. For more information about RANE's risk management solutions, visit www.ranenetwork.com.

Thailand's May 14 election winner is being denied the ability to form a government, creating government paralysis that delays economic recovery initiatives while risking reinvigoration of the mass protest movement of 2020-2021. In this episode of Essential Geopolitics, RANE’s Asia-Pacific Analyst Nate Fischler explains why Thailand’s Move Forward Party has been unable to form a government and discusses the negative impacts this could have on the country’s economy. 

RANE is a global risk intelligence company that delivers risk and security professionals access to critical insights, analysis and support to ensure business continuity and resilience for our clients. For more information about RANE's risk management solutions, visit www.ranenetwork.com.

On July 10, Turkey’s President agreed to back Sweden joining NATO, and to bring the issue to the Turkish National Assembly for approval. The development prompted a flurry of speculation about Turkey leaning away from Russia and more towards NATO and the West. In this episode of Essential Geopolitics, RANE's Senior Middle East and North Africa Analyst, Emily Hawthorne, provides her insights into Sweden’s NATO accession process. 

RANE is a global risk intelligence company that delivers risk and security professionals access to critical insights, analysis and support to ensure business continuity and resilience for our clients. For more information about RANE's risk management solutions, visit www.ranenetwork.com.

While the European Union and Mercosur reached an initial deal on a free trade agreement in 2019, the deal has not been implemented because of disagreements between the two trading blocs. In recent weeks there has been a push to resurrect the deal, but significant obstacles remain. In this episode of Essential Geopolitics, RANE's Director of Analysis, Adriano Bosoni, shares his insights into these ongoing efforts.

RANE is a global risk intelligence company that delivers risk and security professionals access to critical insights, analysis and support to ensure business continuity and resilience for our clients. For more information about RANE's risk management solutions, visit www.ranenetwork.com.