Arkin Group, an international risk intelligence and consulting firm, has launched TAG Intel, which will provide non-partisan geopolitical intelligence to the wealth management community. TAG Intel is led by Jack Devine, a 32-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, who aims to democratize the information he has been bringing to global corporate clients since 2000.
Devine founded the Arkin Group in May 2000, along with New York attorney Stanley Arkin, who died in 2023. The firm specializes in international crisis management, strategic intelligence, investigative research and business problem solving.
Devine has quite the reputation in the intelligence community; he headed the CIA's Counternarcotics Center when drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was toppled. He was in charge of the program that drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the late 1980s. He was in Chile when Salvador Allende was overthrown in 1973. He was head of Iranian operations amid the Iran-Contra affair, which he has spoken out about. openly saying it was not a good idea.
He said the human resources and network he has built over the years distinguish his intelligence.
“All over the world, I have people who are indigenous and very knowledgeable about their countries,” he said. “And they build a very impressive network, in my opinion.”
A year and a half ago, Devine began meeting with wealth and asset managers.
“Many of the asset managers in particular said, 'We've always looked at the geopolitical stuff around the world. And we had models. But now those models are not working for us. It's a much more complex world. And even though AI provides a lot of information that is conventional wisdom, it's full of what everyone else thinks,” he said.
There is also a lot of misinformation about geopolitical events, so these companies were looking for a source of intelligence they could trust. Devine said his content is not biased and is based on information he receives from sources on the ground in these countries.
TAG Intel will provide the same intelligence in an abbreviated version to wealth managers to reduce uncertainty around global crises and other events that clients may ask about.
This will include a subscription-based content service, The Intel Director's Brief, which starts at $10,000 per year. This subscription includes a weekly analysis of geopolitical issues and their impacts, a crisis report on fast-moving global events and potential market impact, a quarterly report providing deeper industry and sector intelligence, monthly live Q&A sessions interviews with analysts, access to Devine's podcast, and personal events with Devine for select customers. For $299 a year, advisers can access weekly reports, and for $500 a year, they can get crisis reports, according to TAG Intel's website.
“What I hear from asset or wealth managers is that the world is complex and it's uncertain and we don't know where to go to find the answer,” Devine said.
“They can pass it on to their customers; they can be smart. And it relieves a lot of that tension about, 'I have this person's money, but is there going to be a fight next week?' Or, 'Will Putin actually use a nuclear weapon?' And I have answers based on a pretty hard collection of all these issues,” he said.
For example, its content may explore the risk of an all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel, given recent developments. He will talk about where the war is going in Russia and how that war can be useful. He will see how stable things are in Brazil and Argentina.
“Everything in the world is interconnected today,” he said. “If you're looking at Russia, they have their hands in the Middle East. If you're looking at Iran, they have their hands in Russia and North Korea. In other words, everything is interconnected. Money is interconnected.”