Do you want your government spending millions of dollars chasing down people who have very little chance of being prosecuted?

I’ve read pretty deeply into Theranos over the years and if anyone is to blame it’s some of the top level engineering/science/executive employees who knew it was bullshit but stuck around (even with the constant threats and intimidation by Sunny Balwani who IMO is even more guilty than Holmes).

Wealthy investors buying into something the media and half-interested retired Washington DC power players, sitting on countless boards, who care more about dinner parties than technology isn’t that surprising or malicious.

You can maybe blame our current credibility systems for pushing it (just like FTX) but at the same time this is a classic human flaw to join the crowd and seek validation from celebrity. The fact it was a giant loser is plenty of disincentive for those in the future. Plenty of those wealthy people lost big… it wasn’t regular joe holding the bag.

The sheen of the genius tech entrepreneur (in this case with the added phoney multiplier of female tech CEO) has taken a big hit in recent years.

What do you mean? You don't think VC's, media and other people that amplify scams should be liable for the BS that they amplify? So they get to be fact checkers, and tell everyone what's right or wrong, but they have ZERO liability when they cause huge societal damage? There is no way Theranos would have been able to pull off these scams if the strongmen that supported them didn't bully whistleblowers and the media didn't amplify the scam. They can not simply claim ignorance. They all wanted to cash in.

> There is no way Theranos would have been able to pull off these scams if the strongmen that supported them didn't bully whistleblowers

(Citation please)

What VCs and Washington DC investors/board members were directly complicit in covering up the fact the science was bullshit early on? Which whistleblowers were silenced or bullied by them?

You seem to know some juicy details I haven't heard about.

Maybe you mean Erika Cheung? She did indeed contact George Schultz (former Secretary of State, 95yrs old at the time of WSJ expose) after befriending Tyler Schultz (his nephew) who worked there and who was also critical in bringing down Theranos. There was no evidence George even replied to her email or tried to 'bully' her (from what I've read it was just ignored). Not long after she went to WSJ which is what took down Theranos. She's still friends with Tyler.

> I’ve read pretty deeply into Theranos over the years and if anyone is to blame it’s some of the top level engineering/science/executive employees who knew it was bullshit but stuck around (even with the constant threats and intimidation by Sunny Balwani who IMO is even more guilty than Holmes).

Sunny and Elizabeth heard from these employees that it wouldn't work. Then they kept pitching that it would work. Unfortunately our laws are such that the only prosecutable crimes in the Theranos case were for defrauding investors, and the only people guilty of defrauding investors were the ones who pitched to those investors.

And some of those scientists and engineers probably also suffered from wishful thinking that this might be a solvable problem. Wishful thinking is not a crime, pitching wishful thinking as already solved to investors is a crime.