← Iron Command Advisory

Headline retainer

Fractional Geopolitical Advisor

A continuous Indo-Pacific intelligence seat — not a one-off engagement. For funds, family offices, insurers, and corporates that need an operator-voice brain on call when the geopolitical questions land, not three weeks after the decision needed making. An intelligence team on call, without the headcount.

On call

Continuous read, not one engagement at a time

Six months

Minimum block, reviewed at month three

2 of 5

Seats currently open

Ben Brand

Led by

Ben Brand · Former British Army intelligence analyst

Bio →

Who it's for

Four buyer profiles. One seat structure.

Funds & investment teams

Mid-market funds, family offices, and investment teams with Indo-Pacific exposure on the book. An operator-voice read on country, counterparty, and escalation risk as positions and deals cross the desk — not three weeks after the decision needed making.

Insurers & underwriters

Political risk, marine, trade credit, and specialty lines. A standing intelligence read on the exposures behind the portfolio, layered onto the existing underwriting view.

Energy, shipping & trading firms

Operators with physical exposure to Indo-Pacific routes, chokepoints, and counterparties. The read on what is actually changing on the water, ahead of the headline and ahead of the loss.

Corporate strategy & risk leaders

Heads of strategy, risk, and resilience at firms whose plans assume a stable Indo-Pacific. A continuous check on whether that assumption still holds — board-ready, with confidence ratings.

What you get

What's in the seat

Recurring

  • — Monthly 60-minute strategy call
  • — Written monthly summary, decision-grade
  • — Ad-hoc questions between calls (email / Signal)
  • — Standing first-call status for urgent reads

When useful

  • — Investment or risk committee attendance
  • — Exposure read-throughs alongside the deal or risk team
  • — Scenario and escalation sessions on a live question
  • — Warm intros across the operator and analyst network

Capped at five concurrent seats. Capacity protects responsiveness — an ad-hoc question that takes a week to answer is a seat that isn't doing its job.

Compared to

Why fractional, not the alternatives

vs. Hiring senior in-house

A senior intelligence hire is a long recruitment, a multi-month ramp, and a fixed cost that stays on the books. A fractional seat is available next week, scales with what you actually need, and exits cleanly at the end of a block.

vs. A large consultancy

Big-firm engagements default to institutional voice over operator voice, and to generalists over capability and regional specialists. The fractional seat is one analyst, on your problem, who lives inside this world.

vs. Engagement-by-engagement

One-off scoped reads work for individual decisions. They do not catch the question that surfaces between engagements — when it lands in a deal team or risk committee's lap on a Friday afternoon.

Engagement structure

How a seat starts

01

Scoping call

30 minutes. What you're trying to decide on a recurring basis, and whether the seat is the right shape for it.

02

Written scope

Two-page brief: deliverable cadence, response-time targets, off-limits topics, success measure.

03

Six-month block

Mutual NDA, monthly invoicing, light review at month three to confirm the seat is doing its job.

04

Renewal or exit

Continue, scope-change, or close out. No retainer trapdoor — both sides choose at month six.

Take a seat

Two of five seats are currently open.

Discovery calls within 48 hours. The scoping call is 30 minutes, no obligation, and decides whether a fractional seat is the right shape for what you're trying to do.