The Arkin Group, an international risk consulting and intelligence 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’s been bringing to global corporate clients since 2000.
Devine created The Arkin Group in May 2000, along with New York lawyer Stanley Arkin, who passed away in 2023. The firm specializes in international crisis management, strategic intelligence, investigative research and business problem-solving.
Devine has quite a reputation in the intelligence community; he led the CIA’s Counternarcotics Center when drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was taken down. 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 in the middle of the Iran-Contra affair, which he’s been outspoken about saying was not a good idea.
He said the human sources and network he’s built over the years differentiate his intelligence.
“Around the world, I have people that are indigenous and are very knowledgeable about their countries,” he said. “And they build up a very impressive, in my view, network.”
A year and a half ago, Devine started to meet with wealth and asset managers.
“Many of the asset managers in particular said, 'We've always looked at geopolitical things around the world. And we had models. But now those models aren't working for us. It is a much more complex world. And even though AI provides a lot of information that’s conventional wisdom, it’s full of what everybody else thinks,'" he said.
There’s also a lot of disinformation around geopolitical events, so these companies were looking for a source of intelligence they could trust. Devine said his content doesn’t lean toward one party or another, and it’s based on information he’s receiving from sources on the ground in these countries.
TAG Intel will provide this same intelligence in a shortened version for wealth managers to reduce uncertainty around global crises and other events clients may ask about.
This will include a turnkey subscription-based content service, The Intel Director’s Brief, which starts at $10,000 a year. That subscription includes a weekly analysis of geopolitical issues and their impacts, a crisis report on fast-breaking global events and potential market impact, a quarterly report that provides deeper intelligence into industries and sectors, monthly live Q&A sessions with analysts, access to Devine’s podcast, and in-person events with Devine for select clients. For $299 a year, advisors can get access to the weekly reports, and for $500 a year, they can get the crisis reports, according to TAG Intel's website.
“What I hear from asset managers or wealth is, ‘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 clients; 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 war next week?’ Or, ‘Is Putin going to actually use a nuclear weapon?' And I have answers based on a pretty hard collection on all these issues,” he said.
For example, his content might explore the risk of a full-blown war between Hezbollah and Israel, given recent developments. He’ll talk about where the war in Russia is going and how that war might be advantageous. He’ll look at how stable things are in Brazil and Argentina.
“Everything in the world is interlocked today,” he said. “If you're looking at Russia, they've got their hand in the Middle East. If you're looking at Iran, they've got their hands in Russia and the North Koreans. In other words, everything's interconnected. The money's interconnected.”
