Product Code Database
Wikistrat Inc. is a Geopolitics and business consultancy founded in Israel in 2010 by Joel Zamel and Daniel Green and headquartered in the United States. It describes itself as the world's first crowdsourcing consultancy leveraging a global network of over 2,000 subject-matter experts. The vast majority of Wikistrat’s clients were foreign governments; that Wikistrat is, for all intents and purposes, an Israeli firm; and that the company’s work was not just limited to analysis. It also engaged in intelligence collection.
Wikistrat's CEO is Oren Kesler. The Chief Technology Officer was formerly Daniel Green who is now technical advisor, and the previous CEO was Elad Schaffer who replaced the role of Zamel. Lisa Daftari is a senior analyst, Richard Weitz an Expert as well as others.
Previously, Wikistrats Chief Strategy Officer was former Israeli intelligence officer Shay Hershkovitz. Amanda Skuldt was a Senior Project Manager.
The company uses gamification to incentivize analyst participation. CEO Joel Zamel, said in 2013, "Wikistrat's uses a gamification engine we created that incentivizes analysts by ranking them at different levels for the work they do on the platform. They are immediately rewarded through the engine, and we also track granular changes made in real time. This allows us to track analyst activity and encourages them to put time and energy into Wiki analysis."
Among the notable members of Wikstrat's analytic community are Richard Weitz, Daniel Pipes, Parag Khanna, Kenneth R. Timmerman, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Shaukat Qadir, James Joyner, James C. Bennett, Leon Hadar, Michael Rubin, Mark Galeotti and Anne-Marie Slaughter.
The NYU team's predicted that Russia would ultimately have to outsource its security if it were to continue experiencing demographic decline, and if its economy were to remain heavily dependent on commodity exports. Participants from the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies argued that India was rooting for Pakistan's disintegration, considering the collapse of the Muslim state as a prerequisite to fully institutionalizing India's alliance with the United States. Students at Sussex believed that North Korea would collapse without Chinese support and therefore recommended that the nation diversify its allies. Organizers were surprised by the level of interest in the competition.
The firm has been cited by such media outlets as CNN, Reuters, Russia Today, Fox News and NPR as a consultancy of reference for geopolitical issues.
In 2013, Wikistrat ran a simulation for AFRICOM that explored various futures for illicit trafficking in the Trans-Sahel region of Africa.
In January 2014, Wikistrat analysts predicted the rise of a separatist movement in Crimea seeking Russian annexation. This process unfolded in March 2014, prompting digital magazine InformationWeek to write that Wikistrat "beat the CIA."
Zamel's company Psy Group formed a partnership with Cambridge Analytica to jointly bid for contracts with the American Government after the 2016 Trump election win.
US Special Counsel Robert Mueller ― who investigated Russian meddling in the 2016 American elections ― questioned Wikistrat founder Joel Zamel about his relationship with George Nader, a witness who cooperated in the Special Counsel investigation. Mueller also asked questions about the work of Wikistrat.
Donald Trump Jr. had met with Zamel, Nader, and Erik Prince in Trump Tower in August 2016. Their discussion reportedly included an offer on the part of Zamel for pro-Trump manipulation of social media.
On April 5, 2019, the Senate Intelligence Committee sent a letter to Walter Soriano, the owner of USG Security Limited based in Britain and Israel for his communication with Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Psy-Group , Wikistrat, and Black Cube, Orbis Business Intelligence (a firm co-founded by Christopher Steele).
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