One board member being formerly involved in politics doesn't strike me as valid the way you are comparing it to Theranos.
https://www.crunchbase.com/person/condoleezza-rice/advisory-...
I think Rice is towards the bottom of a list of architects of the Iraq War, for what it's worth; only Powell is further removed from it. It probably goes Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, {Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton, &c}, a bunch of other people, and then Rice and Powell. She's a critic --- not very credibly, but a critic nonetheless --- of the actual execution of the war.
I wouldn't hire her, but my reaction to her involvement with Dropbox is less visceral than, I don't know, puzzlement?
Again: I wouldn't hire her, and I'm more confused by her presence on the board than anything else.
One one side you have people who are actively using their political influence to help a company avoid laws and regulations and operate an extremely careless, dangerous, fraudulent, etc. company in a very sensitive industry dealing with people's lives.
On the other side is a former politician who appears to be diversifying her experiences by being a member of the board of several venture-backed tech companies, one of which is a pretty decent way to share files.
The motivations and sinisterness of one of them stands in stark contrast to the other in the example made.
Just because you can punch me, have already rolled up your sleeve and clenched a fist does not mean you have punched me, does it now?
And that's a very curious example you cite considering Iran was the place the neocons wanted to invade next under the same set of false pretenses.
The parallel is easy to make. Repeat if often enough and people will end up saying they have nukes.
"We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon. And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought -- maybe six months from a crude nuclear device. The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
* Iraq has the infrastructure [for a nuclear program]
* Iraq has the nuclear scientists with the know-how
* Iraq was "far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought" after the 1st gulf war
* Specifically, maybe six months from a crude device
* There is uncertainty about how quickly Iraq could acquire nuclear weapons
Sorry, but these are all facts. Saddam DID have a nuclear weapons program at the time of the 1st gulf war, and to the surprise of inspectors he was in fact very, very close to building a 1st-generation bomb. That's why there was an ongoing international inspection regime thereafter.
Although the specific uranium enrichment plant was destroyed after the 1st gulf war, a lot of dual use equipment was kept around. Those nuclear scientists didn't go anywhere. And for reasons that to this day seem bizarre, given what played out, Iraq was playing "cat and mouse games" with the nuclear inspectors (quote from Hans Blix) and there was a great deal of uncertainty about the current status.
Those are facts. Google them yourself.
Did Iraq actually have weapons of mass destruction? No. Did the US and UK oversell the case for war? Yes. Did a great humanitarian tragedy happen as a result? Yes. But that didn't make Ms. Rice a lier when she said what specifically what was quoted above. We must pay careful attention to factual accuracy.
I wish we could adopt Taleb's idea of capping lifetime earnings for anyone who takes a job as a high ranking public servant.