Whoah...what? If you're just receiving their memos, i.e. it's a one-way push relationship, you're paying a few hundred dollars a year at worst.

You start paying more when you ask them to * commission* you research. This is akin to you going to The Economist and saying 'write me a briefing or special report on Mongolia with a special emphasis on the PRC's influence'. It may turn out to be solely aggregated from open sources, but you're generally not paying for the raw intelligence - you're paying for analysis.

The Atlantic is basically asserting that STRATFOR is not Kroll or IGI, e.g. 'deploy assets in China and map out this individual's social and financial network, as well as a list of his beneficial ownerships and Party ties'. But it's not an Economist either. It's far more speculative, internalising the constant uncertainty and source verification involved in actual intelligence operations. I agree with The Atlantic when they say that STRATFOR is being plumped up by Wikileaks, and that comparing it to its image as a "shadow CIA" paints it in a bad light. But if you look at them as a firm of intelligence analysts it's no longer quite so insidious...or incompetent.

To further challenge the equating of publicly sourcing data with incompetence, take the asset management industry. This industry ostensibly bases its decisions on public information. But we pay them. Not because they're sleuthing around Chinese coal plants (some are), but because their analysis adds intrinsic value.