Flutterby™! : Theranos & foreign policy

Vanity Fair looks at Elizabeth Holmes and the demise of Theranos, which was (as many guessed) apparently a big old scam all along. But what stuck out was this paragraph:

Balwani’s lack of medical experience might have seemed unusual at such a company. But few at Theranos were in a position to point fingers. As Holmes started to assemble her board of directors, she chose a dozen older white men, almost none of whom had a background in anything related to health care. This included former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state George Shultz, former Georgia senator and chairman of the Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn, and William J. Perry, the former defense secretary. (Bill Frist, the former Senate majority leader, and former cardiovascular doctor, was an exception.) “This was a board that was better suited to decide if America should invade Iraq than vet a blood-testing company,” one person said to me. Gibbons told his wife that Holmes commanded their attention masterfully.

Emphasis mine. I'm not gonna pile on to Theranos, instead I want to point out that the people Holmes got to pitch her scam to investors, are, yes, exactly the sort of people who have been guiding American foreign policy.

That's the real story.

(Via MeFi)