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A comment on How Theranos Misled Me.

Re:How Theranos Misled Me by poof131 on Monday December 21, 2015 @02:52AM (#10770086)
What I really find upsetting, more than Silicon Valley wasting millions on hype, is the board of directors. Senior government and military officials are making bad decisions for their own pocket books post retirement. General Mattis squashed any internal criticism of Theranos in the military and then left to join the board.[1] This is happening repeatedly with crappy technology being forced down the throat of the military by senior leaders who miraculously get board positions after retiring. Retirement needs to mean retirement for senior government officials. Help a non-profit or teach, but stop selling out the services and the country.

[1] http://www.techinsider.io/emails-theranos-elizabeth-holmes-u...

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Re:How Theranos Misled Me by randycupertino on Monday December 21, 2015 @03:49AM (#10770230)
And also, why does Theranos need such a sleazy board chock full of senators, military generals and other political players? They're a freaking biotech company without scientists and physicians on the board, wtf. The whole Theranos scam really reminds me of Palantir.

Government contractors masquerading as tech companies. So sketchy.

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Re:How Theranos Misled Me by bsaul on Monday December 21, 2015 @03:55AM (#10770241)
Palantir was a scam ??
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Re:How Theranos Misled Me by randycupertino on Monday December 21, 2015 @04:01AM (#10770249)
They're incredibly shady.

$750k in lobbying helps

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00005517...

Their VC firm was the CIA:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB125200842406984303

Cashing fat the .gov to "fight terrorism" doesn't help make US citizens any safer, but does the founder wealthy enough to buy castles & fly his Stanford undergrad floozy around the world on private jets. Nice work if you can get it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/the-stanford-unde...

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Re:How Theranos Misled Me by ryporter on Monday December 21, 2015 @05:34AM (#10770482)
If $750K of lobbying makes them shady, what do you think of millions of dollars spent on lobbying per-quarter by the likes of Google, Amazon, and Apple? [1]

Their VC firm was not the CIA. It was In-Q-Tel, which was founded by the CIA (yes, there is a difference). In-Q-Tel has also funded companies such as FireEye. [2] What's your opinion of them?

I don't really know how to respond to the claim about "Cashing fat the .gov", because I can't parse that sentence. I will point out that Palantir has been increasingly shifting to a corporate client base.

[1] http://www.wired.com/2015/07/google-facebook-amazon-lobbying...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

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Re:How Theranos Misled Me by Kalium on Monday December 21, 2015 @06:27PM (#10774364)
It's semi-public knowledge that In-Q-Tel is the investment arm of the government. They make investments on behalf of any government department that puts up the money.
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Re:How Theranos Misled Me by chrisseaton on Monday December 21, 2015 @05:26AM (#10770449)
But why does any of that mean they aren't a technology company?

It's as if by 'tech company' you really mean 'fashionable, liberal, consumer web startup or ex-startup', which isn't a reasonable definition of 'technology'.

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Re:How Theranos Misled Me by auganov on Monday December 21, 2015 @06:19AM (#10770592)
Palantir getting investment from In-Q-Tel gives them more credibility. The intelligence community is clearly their target market. Getting investment from that community in an overt and legit way doesn't fire any alarms to me.
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