Familiar side, puzzling side
I've been following Carreyrou's coverage of the Theranos trial.

Carreyrou is the ONLY actual reporter still working for mass media. He knows how to dig and ask and pester sources until they give him what he wants, and he also knows how to protect sources from retaliation. Above all he knows how to knit the info into a riveting story.

The tech side of the Theranos story is complex but familiar. It's not clear that Holmes intended from the start to commit a fraud. Like some Ponzi schemers, she may have fully intended to build the proposed machine and solve the proposed problem. Also like some Ponzis, she didn't know when to stop. When experts told her it was impossible, her Silicon Valley arrogance tried to bullshit through the experts. Fake it till you make it works when the sole purpose is Share Value. Faking doesn't get there when the PHYSICAL MACHINE is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE and PHYSICALLY DANGEROUS. As she got deeper into cognitive dissonance, her insatiable psychopathic tendencies blasted down the opposition instead of halting.

The personal side is more puzzling. Carreyrou repeats this theme over and over with each of the board members and sponsors. Holmes had a hypnotic grip on these POWERFUL OLD MEN. These aren't lonely unpopular dudes who are desperately hungry for the slightest hint of attention. These monsters have been admired and obeyed and sycophanted for 70 years. They have been at the top of the food chain for money and power and sex.

Each of them saw Holmes as a goddess in the pantheon of war. The ultimate leader, the new Marcus Aurelius.

Board member George Schultz got his grandson a job working for Theranos. The grandson is a supersmart tech type, and he quickly saw through the fake demonstrations and empty machines. He started to complain through various channels, and ultimately got in touch with Carreyrou. At that point Grandpa George brought in the heavy artillery of private investigators and mobbed-up lawyers to threaten the life of his own grandson. After the grandson nearly killed himself, grandpa halfway realized what was going on.

What's the secret? Elizabeth isn't notably beautiful or sexy, at least in pictures. Some commentators focus on her supposedly cultivated "low voice". It's an average adult female voice, nothing special. Her appeal to these monsters must be partly sexual and partly something else. Best guess is plain old blackmail. She already knew these men through her family connections, so she didn't need to introduce herself with sex. The family connections may also have provided the source of the blackmail.

Later: No, blackmail can't be the source of power. Victims of blackmail don't want to talk about the blackmailer, and are usually forbidden to talk about the blackmailer. This religious devotion is simply a cult, not a blackmail operation. Cults sometimes engage in blackmail, but it's not an essential ingredient.

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Totally irrelevant footnote: Back when shortwave broadcasting existed, I sometimes listened to Radio Beijing. Needless to say, they didn't appreciate our imperialism, so they often talked about our leaders. Their English was far from perfect, and they pronounced George Schultz as Jo-Da Shorts. Whenever his name comes up in the news, I read it as Jo-Da Shorts.

Labels: Asked and badly answered

  ¶ 11:59 PM