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Holmes figured out a pathway to violate the trust of old man wisdom. Sounds like she just fished the right old men. One of those that that’s incredibly mature in one aspect of life and threw all her effort in that direction naively ignoring the rest of of what “trust” actually facilitates.

Poo poo for the men who were fished... don’t s*!t where you eat.



Many of the board members of Theranos were retired military officials, which seems especially interesting in the context of how Theranos was originally planning on selling the technology that we now know to be non-working to the military. I recall that the sale was originally blocked by low-level military regulators. Holmes may not have scammed as many people as we thought - the window is open on the idea that some of her funding and support may have proceeded knowing that it was a ball of nothing, in the hope that it could be pushed forward anyway.

[0]https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2018/03/14/theranos... [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/02/inter...


I get the sense from reading the book that a lot of the fraud Holmes perpetrated was with the intent of buying time and pushing forward with a finalized product. It's still fraud, of course, but fraud with a vision I guess you could say.


'buying time' ... while raising capital from investors, for a fraudulent technology.

Seems like a sort of ponzi scheme where the 'financial instrument' is a 'technology vision'.

Would not be surprised if Holmes pay anything to the earlier investors, with the money of the new ones...

Her life's work, in her words, was 'redefining the paradigm of diagnosis' ( https://youtu.be/5tEeSHy1x98?t=1m19s )

Very 'Silicon Valey' lingo in her speech: 'Reinventing / Redefining / Reimagining XYZ'. With a portfolio of groundbreaking patents...


Given all that, I have wondered if there was ever any intent to actually develop any working tech at all. How many blood samples did they get scanned with other people's money before being shuttered, and how much is that database worth?


What on earth does that even mean in this context? "Don’t shit where you eat" is a warning against office romances. This is plain old fraud AFAIK.


> "Don’t shit where you eat" is a warning against office romances.

It's a warning against poisoning an environment on which you depend that has been applied to lots more than office romances, though that may be the most common use in some social circles today.


That makes sense. I’ve only ever heard it used in that context, but the more general interpretation is a much more logical use of the metaphor.


The more general interpretation is not shitting where you eat


This is the first time I've ever heard that term used in the context of office romances.


It's an uncomfortably mixed metaphor.




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