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Comment by tehjoker | Hacker News Reader

https://news.crunchbase.com/health-wellness-biotech/theranos...

Board of directors

    Henry Kissinger (former United States Secretary of State);
    Jim Mattis (retired Marine Corps four-star general);
    George Shultz (former United States Secretary of State);
    Richard Kovacevich (former CEO of Wells Fargo);
    William Perry (former United States Secretary of Defense); and
    William Foege (former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

Investors

    Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who led a $5.8 million Series A in February 2005;
    Venture capitalist and Draper Fisher Jurvetson partner Tim Draper, who remained an outspoken defender of Theranos at least until 2018;
    Oracle Executive Chairman and founder Larry Ellison; and
    National pharmacy and retail chain Walgreens.

View on HN

'On April 21, 2018, Draper predicted during an Intelligence Squared debate that "In five years you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you're not using crypto."'

Nice! No, Tim, I'm laughing at you. There are so many crazy VC's.

How do these Secretary’s of State and Generals end up on boards like this?

Like how do they find the company in the first place? Who connects SecDef Mattis with a blood test company?

what value do they gain out of being on it measurably? Equity? Salary?

and once there what do they really do?

Does Henry Kissinger really have a connection to the modern day FDA to move things along for Theranos?

> How do these Secretary’s of State and Generals end up on boards like this?

They get jobs on these boards, because the owners of the company want them on the board, because they have friends who can grease the wheels in getting the DOD to buy services from this startup.

It's just plain-old corruption. As long as it's not formally quid-pro-quo, it's not illegal.

> Does Henry Kissinger really have a connection to the modern day FDA to move things along for Theranos?

He probably can't move the FDA, their process is too streamlined and public, and they may be under too much of a microscope, but he almost certainly has friends who can move some less-public/streamlined/visible processes - procurement.

It's just plain-old corruption

Yup - as with Dropbox's tapping of Condoleeza Rice.

Lest we forget: https://www.drop-dropbox.com/

damn, i kind of like her now...

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