And that is a big part of the Theranos story.Ĭould you talk a little bit about the mythos surrounding Elizabeth Holmes and why people were attracted to that? It’s associating yourself with people who are credible and well regarded by society to give yourself credibility. The has a term for this, and it’s affinity fraud. She was able to meet Gen Mattis, ex-cabinet members like Kissinger, and on and on. He introduced her to all those luminaries many of them were fellows at the Hoover Institution. Then George Schultz was key in terms of being able to put together the last iteration of the board. It started out with Channing Robertson, the well-regarded Stanford engineering professor who would join her board, encouraging her and putting her in touch with people he knew around the Valley. Early on, she started associating with these older men who could give her more credibility. She very much did that in a calculated way. How was Holmes able to secure such supporters? It seems like the collection of high-profile people on the board, many of whom did not actually have scientific expertise, played into the hype. The threat of litigation was always in the air, so employees were worried about speaking out. Sunny and Elizabeth were very secretive – they managed that company like it was the CIA. There is still a willingness to worship geniuses in Silicon Valley You could argue that even that was too long because these unreliable and inaccurate blood tests were already available in Walgreens. It was really only in the limelight for two years before I wrote my first story on the scandal. Why do you think it was able to go unchecked for so long?Īs Holmes herself has said, Theranos was in stealth mode in its first 10 years, so the company was not on anyone’s radar. When I broke the Theranos scandal, in a small way, it contributed to the backlash against tech that began to transpire. The disposition of the country and of the press towards Silicon Valley was still positive. People did not come down hard on Facebook until the 2016 election, when they realized the roles that Facebook and Twitter had played and the way those platforms were manipulated by Russian hackers. This was all before the backlash against big tech. Theranos at one point was worth even more and was the most valuable private startup in Silicon Valley back in 2014. This boom started with the emergence of Facebook and Twitter and then metastasized with the appearance of these other big unicorns like Uber and Airbnb. Theranos rose to prominence between 20, during the beginning of what I call the “unicorn boom” – Silicon Valley’s second enormous boom after the dotcom boom of the late 90s. What do readers need to know about the particular moment in Silicon Valley culture when Theranos rose to prominence? He spoke with the Guardian about the lies Holmes pulled off and the larger questions about Silicon Valley culture that Theranos raised. Theranos dissolved in 2018 and its star founder, Elizabeth Holmes, will face trial in a San Jose courtroom next week.Ĭarreyrou’s book about the rise and fall of Theranos, meanwhile, became a bestseller and the author is hosting a new podcast, Bad Blood: the Final Chapter, as the trial begins.
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