Opinion on "The Senate Committee's Report on the CIA's Use of Torture"

Ever since "The Senate Committee's Report on the CIA's Use of Torture" has come out in the public domain there are two extreme views that I see. Those who would be saying the reports stand that torture was not required and it was extremism and compromised on humanity etc. The other's who would characteristically say the report is wrong, and it was because of the torture that many lives were saved.

I believe the truth is perhaps somewhere in between. Till now I was avoiding to write on it, but now at-least there is one expert who thinks on the same lines although they have left some questions in their article. Obviously since it seems like an American author so I wouldn't get into the details of his biases.

Now coming back, before getting into the moral questions lets try and recall what had happened. In India it was approx 9 in the evening in India when America was attacked.

It was typically a situation that was 1. Not anticipated. 2. And no one had any clue. 3. The top management, in this case the bureaucrats and the politicians who were perhaps thinking they were back in the wild wild west, where everything is my-way or the highway. And hence what followed next was more of a logical conclusion

Stratfor has perhaps got the entire thing closest to reality that most people while are calm now, were jittery then. They correctly diagnosed the problem: "The use of torture was not part of a competent intelligence effort, but a response to a massive intelligence failure."

On torture and what went wrong with US was perhaps quoted by the report as: "The problem with torture — as with other exceptional measures — is that it is useful, at best, in extraordinary situations. The problem with all such techniques in the hands of bureaucracies is that the extraordinary in due course becomes the routine, and torture as a desperate stopgap measure becomes a routine part of the intelligence interrogator's tool kit."

As far as the moral dilemma is concerned. There is a time when you don't know anything, so you get people who deliver with perhaps dubious means and then you build capability and transfer to achieve things in the right way.

This could have sound counter-intuitive and extremely grey. But we need to accept, not everything in life is in black or white. Many things are out-rightly in between.

Sharing Ideas for hiring website

People are shy of sharing ideas, I believe knowledge should always be shared. 

Recently while checking some websites for jobs I came across some ideas and shared it with one of the job site founders. I don’t know if the mail was correct or not but looking back I find it quite funny, wonder what the person at the other end thought.

Let me share the mail here.

Hi,
I will skip the formalities of introducing myself because that is irrelevant and get to my suggestions.
On the hiring side I think you should collect two set of data/response to question/
1. Are you looking for someone with the same industry experience?
2. Are you looking for people with skill set that would suit your company and bring in diversity of skill-set and perhaps lateral thinking capability?
And accordingly mark all jobs either (1) People with industry experience or (2) cross functional experience.
This will help identify HRs on what they want. People from within industry may not always get them fresh thinking but maybe the HRs don't want it. If it comes out clearly then it can be mapped to the persons field. Hence making acceptance and rejection easier.
In any domain, a job can be bracketed in between creative, operations/coordination and management. You can start the paid module where each applicant's experience is distilled into these either manually or programming and from there you can advice on best matches if the HRs are looking for cross-functional hiring.
I don't think there is any job website which looks from this perspective. If I have not been articulate enough about my suggestion but you are interested then let me know when you are in Mumbai and relatively free.
Its merely a suggestion based on my observations. Good luck!
--
Warm regards,

It was nice of the founder to actually reply that they were working on something similar. Which confirmed that I was not the only one thinking about the problem. Rather there were people who were also thinking about the solution. 

Change in working style – political reporters in India

I have started falling back on my idea of writing everyday. As said earlier, I was travelling, but then agree its more of an excuse. Perhaps I could have written. Just don't know how or when. 

Off late I have had the chance to read up on certain interesting pieces and also think through some of the problems. For example. 

There was an interesting article in Business Standard on how government reporters are now finding it difficult to get information from the Lutyens. (Click here.) The author then writes about how the flow of information is very stifling on the corporate side.

The one sentence from the article that perhaps can sum up the problem when corporate stifle reporters from carrying their job would be --

"When an entire group gives up probing on a certain company altogether that results in blow ups such as Satyam and NSEL scam."

Perhaps something similar can happen with the government as well if it starts creating choking the freedom of the press. Perhaps political reporters should take a leaf from the corporate reporters' book. Now political reporters should also start reading all documents and make noise for transparency in governance.

They should perhaps think of themselves as auditors who are looking for paper trails and mismatch in the stories or some hard facts. It will increase the work load but perhaps this may be the new way of working.

Sometimes the only way of doing an interesting thing or achieving even decent result is by slogging hard. Now the time has come for journalist to show if they are in the profession because they actually like it or if it was just a coincidence and they don't like to do hard work. 

Book Review -- Death of Dreams: A terrorist's tale by Aditya Sinha

There are many books on Kashmir. But nearly all books are written by people who have some kind of bias, ideological, national or political. This is the sole reason why when we see a certain tone of message being constantly repeated throughout the book. Facts are used to paint a black & white picture. The truth is far from it, as always!

Most individuals tend up grow in certain way. We are at an age where we are protected by parents to an age where we want freedom to hang out with friends and dream endlessly about forging the dreams into reality.

Death of dreams is perhaps one of the few books which catches the entire story of J&K from a Kashmiri's perspective. It’s about a boy who grew up around Srinagar. The story is the journey of a boy named Firdous's story was no different except that in trying to achieve his dream, he grew and understood how lack of leadership and politics for personal gains has made the dreams into nightmare.

It marks his entire journey of what led him to join the terrorist organisation? His discovery of short-sighted and selfish politicians in India. An ISI who in the name of caring about people of Kashmir have one single aim, make India Unstable. Irrespective of what they say openly, they have no intentions of looking into the benefit of the people.  How he got captured by the Indian Military and then the role of select officers of Indian military whose questions made him think of the choices he made.

It also highlights the different point of time when hurriyat had a mass following and when JKLF had a say in the state. The strengths and flaws of the organisations, and how they lost the plot.

This book has captured the atrocities that the people had to suffer at the hands of everyone including terrorists and the collateral damage at the hands of the army.

For anyone who has interest in the history of Jammu & Kashmir, Death of Dreams: A terrorist's tale by Aditya Sinha is a must read.

Organisations and Leadership

Defining organisations and leadership is important and there are many ways in which it can be done. This is just one of that I think best defines the genes in terms of expectation. 

1 – Organisation of Opportunists

There is an organisation where the dominant behaviour is governed by only one objective, “My well being”. This is an organisation, where a number of individuals have come together to look after their personal benefit! 

When they keep saying different things and sometimes contrary to what they have been recommending but all their actions result in benefiting them, well that’s a classic opportunist. Everyone knows such people can’t be trusted.

With time and observation, it dawns on us that most opportunists are myopic in their vision and understanding of the world. These people cannot bring new thinking and it is above them to rise to situations where leadership and courage is required.

Most of all they cannot develop a thought, these opportunist are only good in terms of riding the momentum of public emotions. When the followers/associates become sentimental they will not come over to bring calm around them, rather they will use that moment and try to build strength. Time and again they will remain opportunist.

2 – Organisation of an Ideology

This organization believes in some fact or fiction or story or whatever. They have a belief, an ideology for which they work. Members here will put their personal needs and wants in second place to the ideology.  

Well, here you are dealing with an orgnisation where the basis to achieve a common goal. The goal is made or prepared considering their ideology, it is based on some principal -- right or wrong is always debatable but there is an underlying motto. .

Leaders with ideology can be people with exceptional ability.

If the organization is driven by the ideology such as --"Justice and Equality for all (and not limited to a certain set of people), if not of past, but for present & future" -- and its members are actually able to implement it then the people can consider themselves as blessed. 

When such organisations is working properly and is fair then you will see many leaders emerging. It can groom a good leader who can evolve to the caliber level of Mahatma Gandhi and Mandela. These days, such people are hard to find but more than that such organisations are difficult to find.

Otherwise it is extremely important to understand what is the core idea or the vision that one would end up supporting. Because it can be as distorted as the KKK, Black Panthers, Taliban, etc. (there are couple of Indian versions as well on all sides -- regional level, religion, caste, sub-caste, etc. ).

But allow me to put a little caveat. One must understand that with time and experience, since humans as a species also evolve, individuals will also change and organisations are made up of individuals.

Leadership : Bucketing individual leaders

Broadly there are four types of leaders. I have marked them as Type 1, 2, 3 and 4 for ease of reference:

Type 1: They want power and feel like a king. Power is their only ambition. At times such leaders can be so much of a control freak that they will go to length to discredit their opponents, especially those whom they consider as strong competitors. These are also mostly opportunists who transform into tyrannical. Type 1 does not have any grand plans. And they cannot think beyond 1-to-5 years (in democracy) or whatever period they fancy (dictator). And also they do not evolve in their message to the need of the people or the process of evolvement is too slow.

Type 2: Leaders that want position of power to profit only. From a leadership point these are opportunists. This may sound similar to Type 1, but there is a subtle difference, they don’t care of being a king or king maker or whatever, for them it’s not about positions its money/power or anything that they are aiming for constantly.

When opportunists become leaders they cannot bring radical changes nor will they rise up to a situation when people in general are sentimental. When the public in its emotional moments demand blood, these leaders will become brutal, but they will not dominate continuously by being brutal, that capacity these individuals do not have.

Since they understand their potential they will not aim for the highest office but the second highest or the council that supports the highest office. This is the lot which would shift between power broker and being in position of leadership like a governor, CM, MoS etc.

Type 3: Leaders, who want power in order to write history. It’s not money or power that is the driving factor here. It could be leaving a legacy, or creating history. Usually such people either create institutions or mold an institution to their vision. Off all the characteristic there is one that are crucial here if they are not only in power but they are also the face of power — Good debater/speaker – they will give speech to capture imagination.

If leadership is split between front face and party organizer, and the true leader is more of a party organizer and not in the leader chair himself/herself, then it would be completely ideological driven. There are also times that such leaders, when they get a taste of power, then ideology goes out of the window and they become Type 1 leader i.e. a tyrannical, power hungry leader.

Differentiating the two would be a challenge but I think the easiest way would be to see how they handle the day to day activity and keep an eye on their past actions. That should give you a glimpse of what type the leader is – Mahatma Gandhi/Mandela or Hitler/Chavez.

Type 4: People who are propelled to leadership position and their target is simple one, to stay in that position for as long as they can, even if they have no ability and/or appetite to deliver results for which the power was bestowed upon them. In either case such leadership is usually week

'The Big Short'. How the world jumped off a cliff

Although there are many books on the subject of what happened in 2008, which we keep referring to as financial meltdown, panic etc. This book is an excellent read for those who do not know anything but would like to know about it without bothering much of complicated explanation.

Before dissecting the book, a few words about the author just to lay the foundation of why he was able to write this book the way he did it.

Who is this guy, ‘Michael Lewis’?

Michael Lewis did his BA in history from Princeton and then pursued MA in Economics from LSE (London School of Economics). He then got a job with Saloman Brothers and worked at its bond desk. He left the company and wrote his first book Liar’s Poker, describing his experience at Saloman Brothers.

In both the books – Liar’s poker and The Big Short – he has mentioned many times how amusing the financial landscape is. Read the following first sentence of the The Big Short “The willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grown-ups remains a mystery to me to this day.”

Ah! So this guy actually understands finance. But most importantly he is not blinded by money and so he managed to walk away from it.

The Big Short – A True Story

In this book, leaving out the nitty-gritty of the financial crisis, the author -- Michael Lewis -- has focused on two things. The book’s idea was to find out the people who first identified the problem in the financial world. And in the process of introducing these people, and their thought on investments; along with that he has also explained the problem of the financial world.

It is common that once an event passes away or has occurred there are many experts or pundits who claim to have predicted it.  But how seriously should these people be taken? This is the tough part to answer.

Had someone put in their hard earned income and reputation behind their rationale, well such person should be taken very seriously. Because they will lose out on everything, economic and social, if their rationale doesn't come out properly in real life.  

The entire book is about the people who understood the fallacy of profit that the market had built and exploited betting against it. Lewis also meets these people to find out how they came to understand that the castle of modern finance had its foundation in air, and it will fall the moment people wake up from their slumber.

Reading through his search leads to the conclusion that there were four main people who understood and placed their money where there mouth was. These set of people shorted the sub-prime market even when the world discouraged them and against all odds at the end they made truckloads of money.

The first guy mentioned in the book is Steven Eisman, a cynical money manager who does not hesitate to speak his mind and be honest. One of hedge fund manager who described Eisman to Lewis said, “He’s sort of prick in a way, but he’s smart and honest and fearless.” He understood what was happening way back in 2002 although he was shown how to short the sub-prime market only in 2006.

Then the second character is introduced, Dr Mike Burry, who perhaps created the very instrument a carried out the first trade where he shorted the sub-prime market in 2005. In fact, it was his insistence that made all the banks creates the financial product called CDS (corporate default swap). And he was a neurosurgeon by education who also understood equity investment. He started a blog where he would discuss his thoughts on specific equity trade, which eventually many people started following and they were actually making money. How refined he was with investment ideas on his blog can be gauged from the statement made by money manager at a big Philadelphia value fund: “He is doing value investing – in the middle of the dot-com bubble. He’s buying value stocks, which is what we are doing. But we are losing money. We are losing clients. All of a sudden he goes on this tear. He’s up fifty percent. It’s uncanny. He’s uncanny. And we are not the only ones watching him.”

So once Dr Burry realises his potential, he opens a hedge fund called Scion Capital.  The moment he made this announcement on his blog, investors piled up. And hence the doctor began his new career as a hedge fund manager. Somewhere in the middle, it is revealed ‘why the doctor is such a genius,’ but at that point the book feels like a personal tragedy where the protagonist discovers that he is not special as he thought he was. (I will not reveal any further about this person. Read it to find out.)

After this the readers will be introduced to Greg Lippmann, a Deutsche Bank trader. “The least controversial thing to be said about Lippmann was that he was controversial. He wasn’t just a good bond trader, he was a great bond trader. He wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t even rude, at least not intentionally. He simply evoked extreme feeling.”

This description should say it all. He is one of the people who dealt with Dr Burry while providing him with the CDS. And once he understood what Burry was doing and that bonds containing home mortgage loans are crap.  Lippmann was the guy who went around approaching selling the idea of CDS. He is also the person who showed Eisman on how to short the entire sub-prime market.

Then, the readers will be introduced to two more guys, Jamie Mai and Charlie Ledley who would form the company called Cornwall Capital. These two along with one more person, Ben Hockett, short the sub-prime market. What made these people unique was that the two partners of Cornwall Capital had opened their account for investing with $110,000. They had managed to convert this in to $12 million in a span of two years! There was nothing brilliant or genius about their methodology, it was pure common-sense.

It’s a great book. One should read it just so that they understand that most part of finance is not complicated, it is simple. The book tries to explain an important event. It is unsettling to know that so many smart people had actually no clue about that they were trying to build profit from thin air and in ways that belies the common sense! 

Despite making money, Eisman explains how it feels to be on the other side: “In 2008 it was the entire system that was at risk. We were still short. But you don’t want to the system to crash. It’s sort of like the flood’s about to happen and you are Noah.  You’re on the ark. Yeah, you’re okay. But you are not happy looking out at the flood. That’s not a happy moment for Noah.”