The Theranos Trial Concludes — With NPR's Bobby Allyn

Bobby Allyn is an NPR tech reporter based in San Francisco. He's been waking up at 2 a.m. to watch the trial of ex-Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from the courthouse. In this episode, Allyn breaks down the case for and against Holmes, the biggest moments in the trial, and the potential outcomes now that the jury is deliberating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put Agentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade offs and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay?

• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razor were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation.

• 1:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversations of the tech world and beyond. Well, last week, the trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of Theranos, now disgraced, concluded. She is charged with all sorts of nefarious things, including wire fraud that stemmed from her leadership of the company. And, well, everybody right now is starting to wonder what's going to happen next to her, what will happen next in this case, what does it mean for Silicon Valley? We've had Erin Griffith on in the past. She was out at the court watching the trial. And now we're going to bring in another reporter who's been there through the whole thing. Bobby Allen is an NPR tech reporter.

• 2:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  He joins us today to discuss what the situation is with the Theranos trial and what we can learn from it. Bobby, welcome to the show. Hey, Alex. Thanks for having me on. How's it going, man?

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Going OK. I think we should get out of the way that I'm not here because I'm the most qualified there and no reporter, but because I bribed you with games of hotshot at a recent hangout you and I had at an arcade in San Francisco. I just thought I'd get that out of the way.

• 2:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's true, but this has been on the calendar for quite some time. But, OK, yeah, we could take that. Also, I just want to, like, let's get this out of the way. Like, you're not going to talk the whole podcast in, like, NPR voice, are you?

• 2:39Speaker 01

  There's no such thing as NPR voice, Alex.

• 2:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  There's definitely.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  I have tried to disabuse you of this false idea. I talk like I do to you, as I do on the radio. There's no NPR voice.

• 2:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  There is. There is. It's kind of like, you know, I'm gonna try to do it. Today in Georgia, there was a trial about-

• 2:57Speaker 01

  That's like the sweaty balls NPR voice. We have evolved a lot since the sweaty balls era.

• 3:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  What is that?

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Oh, it's like, it's a very famous-

• 3:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  What person?

• 3:06Speaker 01

  SNL skit. Look it up later.

• 3:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, OK, I see. So you're gonna talk like an actual human being then?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yes, I'll talk like a human.

• 3:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  I appreciate that.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 3:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  But you should, I know we're gonna get into Theranos trial in a moment, but can you do the thing that you were doing, the little warm-up that you do before you go on?

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Oh, Peter Piper picked a prick of pickled peppers. Peter Piper picked a prick of pickled peppers. Peter Piper picked a prick of pickled peppers. I mean, not every NPR reporter does that. I just do it to make sure when I have my headphones on that my peas are not popping because the sound engineers in Washington will hear that and say, "Push your mic back," or "Take that over," because a popping pea is just really hot on the ear and it's unpleasant.

• 3:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Well, I'm sure your vocal exercise in the beginning will really make our editor, Nate, very happy. So Nate, just a shout out to you in the beginning. Let's talk about this trial. What stage of the trial are we in right now?

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this trial's been going on for three and a half months. Of course, the federal government is charging Elizabeth Holmes. As you mentioned, with wire fraud, we've seen nearly 30 witnesses take the stand that the government has called. The defense mounted their side of the story in front of this jury, which included days of testimony from Elizabeth Holmes. Right now, it's winding down and the, oh, shoot, actually, because it's gonna go, so I should act as if the jury is already deliberated, because if it's gonna air Wednesday, I'll say the jury is now deliberated.

• 4:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'm weaving all of this in, by the way.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  You are not.

• 4:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  I am. We're recording, we're recording on a Friday, so.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Okay, so the, yeah, the jury, um, okay, the jury is now deliberating. I'm holding my nose and saying that because it's not true, but it will be true Wednesday. So jury deliberations are underway.

• 4:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, so what does that mean?

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Um, that means that the fate of Elizabeth Holmes is on the line, that these eight women and, sorry, back up, that these eight men and four women who are on the jury are trying to figure out whether Elizabeth Holmes is a criminal, whether she intentionally and knowingly defrauded investors and duped patients, or if they believe Elizabeth Holmes, that she didn't do anything wrong, she pursued this company from a good faith perspective, that she was a go-getter, hardworking entrepreneur who saw her business fail, but that's not a crime, and that the government just didn't meet its burden, that she, you know, committed a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. And if you really look at the whole story of Elizabeth Holmes, it's much messier than the story that

• 5:32Speaker 01

  the government wants to tell. So the jury is, will be sort of hashing that out amongst themselves.

• 5:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can you in like 60 seconds tell us what she's actually accused of? What is the crime here?

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's, it's a federal, um, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which is sort of a old timey sounding crime, isn't it? Wire fraud? But if this happened over the mail, like if you sent a check in the mail to someone, um, you're an investor and you sent a check in the mail to Elizabeth Holmes to invest in the company, and that investment was made based on a lie, that would be mail fraud, right? This is wire fraud because it happened over wires. But she's accused of deceiving investors about what their nose technology could do, right? She had this proprietary device she called the Edison or the Mini Lab, and she said it could test for hundreds of diseases with a pin prick of blood. Prosecutors say that's total BS. That was never the case. She made false representations

• 6:26Speaker 01

  to investors. They lost lots of money and patients who went to Walgreens in Palo Alto in Arizona who got tests, got faulty or error ridden results, and they were duped. So that's kind of the core of the case against her.

• 6:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  So you've been sitting in the courtroom, yeah?

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Yep, I've been in the courtroom in San Jose. Reporters usually show up at like two or three in the morning to get a spot. I think there's 34 spots in the main courtroom. If you can't get in the main courtroom, you could go to overflow, but there's been a lot of spectators. It's been like a bit of a scene in front of the courthouse every day.

• 7:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So having been there and sitting through this case, what do you think the best argument for convicting her is? And what do you think the best argument for acquitting her is?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 7:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Like, what have you heard that's been convincing on both sides?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. I guess that's, I kind of reject the premise because I, it's not my job to say what's convincing or not convincing. I know you're gonna roll your eyes.

• 7:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Come on, but, come on, but you're a person, you know, so just give us what, come on.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, I mean, the government mustered lots of evidence. And I, I mean, I could tell you what struck me.

• 7:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, okay.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't.

• 7:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Whatever words you need to make yourself comfortable about telling us what the strong argument was for the government and the strong argument for Holmes was, you can use those words.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. I'm not, I'm not trying to split hairs here, but it's, it's just difficult because like, to members of the jury, what is like sticking with them is not necessarily what like academics, lawyers and journalists like attach themselves to. So it's, it's always hard to know like what piece of evidence or what like legal theory is working. But, I mean, look, the government has recordings from Elizabeth Holmes, in her own words, before the defense called her, taking the stand, you know, talking about partnerships with the military that never materialized, that, that her blood testing technology would be used on battlefields when it never was, you know, talking about business partnerships that never came to fruition. They had her on the stand saying under oath that she put the, she basically forged documents with the logo of Pfizer's

• 8:31Speaker 01

  and other pharmaceutical companies validating her technology when she didn't have their okay to do that. There's lots of instances of, of that, right? Of Elizabeth Holmes exaggerating or allegedly lying about what this technology could do. There's all sorts of screwy stuff about the financials. I mean, the, the big narrative here is that When, when, when basically Elizabeth Holmes was up against the wall and Theranos was just burning through investor money and was on the brink of collapse, instead of telling her investors that prosecutors say she lied, she covered it up and then pulled a lot of shady things to conceal the fact that the company couldn't do what it promised to do.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  And then, of course, it imploded. But it's not just a startup that has a big promise and fails. It's different because it's in the extremely regulated healthcare space, right? And prosecutors say the, the type of exaggerations were egregious and not just exaggerations, but that she crossed the line into, into criminal fraud. And that's why, you know, her life and liberty is on the line. She could go to prison.

• 9:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  And, and the best defense against that?

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Again, I don't know.

• 9:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Have you heard?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 9:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Have you heard anything compelling in the trial about, you know, that would make, make people think that she's potentially innocent of, of these crimes?

• 9:50Speaker 01

  I can't, I can't subjectively say what's best and what's worse. I could just tell you what happened, which is a whole, a whole sort of range of defenses. I mean, one of them included wide-ranging finger pointing, saying my deputy son, Sonny Balwani was responsible, lab directors and other scientists were responsible. I mean, the most emotional testimony, and again, I don't know if this will resonate with the jury, but it was definitely striking in the courtroom, was, was saying that she was the victim of sexual and emotional manipulation by her partner and the dep, who was also the deputy at Theranos. And that so beclouded her judgment that she didn't have the, you know, the sort of cognition of a criminal that she like couldn't sort of like think clearly at the time of the alleged crime,

• 10:33Speaker 01

  which was a super controversial defense, right? She basically turned this white collar criminal trial into a trial about sexual abuse. Is that gonna connect with the jury or will they dismiss it? I have no idea. But it was, it was definitely something that like stood out, I think. If you're in the courtroom, I mean, she was crying, she was weeping on the stand.

• 10:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Did you hear anything that she said that, that, you know, made you think, oh, okay, well, maybe there's a point there?

• 11:01Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, I don't, again, I don't, I don't really know how to answer that. Maybe there's a point there.

• 11:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Well, let's, look, we're going to go through all of her different little defenses in, in the next, not little defenses, all of her little defenses.

• 11:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  In the next segment, so why don't we pause on that? I do want to talk to you about the fact that she decided to take the stand, which was extremely surprising to me.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because everything we hear about the legal system leads us to believe that it actually doesn't make any sense for a defendant to go take the stand on their behalf, because they might trip up and potentially turn the case that's based off of facts into a referendum on a single thing they said or their personality, and it generally doesn't work out very well. But Elizabeth Holmes did take the stand to defend herself. Why?

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, as you mentioned, it's dicey from a legal strategy perspective to take the stand. But, I mean, if we know anything about Elizabeth Holmes, we know that she is this headstrong person who sees herself as a visionary, who had the charisma to convince dozens of very sophisticated investors to pour nearly a billion dollars into a company that turned out to be a fraud, right? So she believes in the power of her, um, her words and the power to be able to persuade people. So I think she probably wanted to take the stand. She wanted to address the jury directly that, hey, look,

• 12:34Speaker 01

  I was this young, ambitious, go-getter entrepreneur who had a dream and it fell apart, but I'm not a criminal. There's nothing that you will hear from me that will make you believe that I knowingly and willingly did something that should send me to prison. And then the second point on why did she take the stand is her defense lawyers in, in legal papers talked a lot about this abuse claim, right? That she was, her, her ex-boyfriend Sonny Baloney forced her to have sex with her, controlled like everything that she ate, the way she spoke, all of these things. You can't make that claim and then not hear directly from her, right? I mean, if you're going to introduce the abuse claim, you need to have the complainant, right? The person who's making that complaint, take the stand under oath. And she did, and you know, she was subject to cross-examination from the government and it was pretty intense.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  It was pretty awkward. I mean, it was like, if there was one thing that really jumped out at me as being like some of the most dramatic scenes that unfolded in this courtroom, it was like the government's cross-examination of homes about the abuse stuff.

• 13:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And what was, well, if you think that the reason why she took the stand is because she was this charismatic person that was able to convince all these folks to give the money away for a product that ended up not fulfilling the expectations, couldn't end up making a number of diagnostic tests that she promised. When you saw her up on the stand, did you find her convincing? What was it like? Did you see some of that come through? And did you watch the reactions of the jury? And did you think that there was a connection there?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the jury, they're all wearing masks in this trials in COVID time. So that does take a key piece of information away from like, is this connecting? Is it not connecting? You could kind of see their eyes and their body language. But I mean, so much of like, you know, reading someone's emotions is their face. And it just sucks that that's covered up from the perspective of like, trying to figure out what the jury's thinking and feeling. From the audience perspective, I mean, she came across as, I'm sure that she was trained and had many exercises leading up to this about all sorts of things. And she seemed very coached. She was very confident. She stuck to what her storyline is with the rise and fall of Theranos. And she came across as pretty human. I mean, like, you know, when she was talking about the

• 14:49Speaker 01

  abuse, she was like, you know, she was dabbing her eyes with the tissue as her eyes were welling up. She was weeping at certain points. She spoke haltingly. It didn't seem like crocodile tears. I mean, to me, it didn't seem like she was putting on an act. I mean, she wasn't bawling her eyes out and crying in this Rittenhouse-esque way where it was just like, whoa, like, that is a very huge emotional reaction. She was emotional, but it did actually seem pretty genuine. And I think for the most part, her performance on the stand was impressive. I mean, She just came across as a very, you know, confident and fairly consistent witness, at least in terms of what she thinks her story is. And in terms of like, did she have any flubs or what, you know, I don't, I don't remember any flubs. And she, yeah, she, she

• 15:34Speaker 01

  was just, I think, a very strong, a strong witness. And I talked to some defense lawyers who were paying attention and they, they said, you know, it was probably the right move by the defense to put her on the stand.

• 15:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you actually had a line in one of your stories. I think this is from one of your stories. You write, "Her testimony was perhaps the best opportunity for the defense to undercut the government's case."

• 15:52Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah.

• 15:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Say more about that.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, um, you know, the, the government, their case basically boils down to Elizabeth Holmes' credibility. Do you believe it? Do you not? Right? They're saying that she did this and she always had, had, you know, she intentionally was deceiving investors and patients. Um, the best opportunity to say that's not true is to hear directly from her. Right? And so she went on the stand and she said, "Look, I've made some mistakes. There are things, looking back, that I should have done differently, but I had my head sort of in the clouds." Right? Like, I was really focused on research and development. I was really focused on the grand vision of this company. I was focused on trying to revolutionize laboratory science and empowering people to have more control over their health. And

• 16:37Speaker 01

  if there were problems with the technology, like my lab directors were more in touch with that than I was. The scientists in the labs were more in touch with that than I was. And I just, you know, I didn't ever talk to Rupert Murdoch or Betsy DeVos's people or the Walton family and the others who've poured money into the company and said things that I thought were lies, that I thought were untrue. Um, you know, I, I, I wish I would have done a few things differently, but for the most part, you know, I, I think I was a good faith actor. I mean, that was her testimony. And, um, you know, hearing that from her is like a lot more powerful than, than hearing it from witnesses who knew her or hearing it from a bunch of lawyers. Right? So, um, yeah, I think when the jury, you know, as the jury's deliberating this case, they're going to be thinking like, do we believe her? Do we

• 17:20Speaker 01

  not believe her? I mean, so much of this turns on like whether she's a believable person. And I don't know, if the past is any god, she does seem to be pretty persuasive. So I guess we'll see, we'll see what the jury thinks.

• 17:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Did she, so she has this trademark deep voice that she uses when she wants to pitch her product. Um, how did her voice sound? Was it at all different than the way people described it?

• 17:43Speaker 01

  This is the question everyone asks and the answer is underwhelming. So prepare yourself. And it's that she had

• 17:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Bobby, give me something good here. Come on, man. No, I'm kidding. Go ahead.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  No, I mean, on the voice question, it's just like she had, oh, sorry. I need to shut off my email.

• 17:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can you turn off your notifications, Bobby? Jesus Christ.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  On the voice question, um, it's just not, it's honestly just not that interesting. It's like she had a deep sounding voice, but it didn't sound remarkably deep. It didn't sound like, like bear, like a baritone that was sort of like fabricated. I mean, it was, yeah, it was a deep sounding voice, but it's not, I don't know what else to say about it. To be honest, I mean, like, so like people have pointed to clips like on Mad Money when she, like the, the

• 18:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  She was with Jim Cramer. Yep.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Right. When she went on after the Wall Street Journal story came out by John Kerry Rue exposing the company and she was in full like damage control mode. She had like a really deep voice and that, so like the Elizabeth Holmes we heard in the San Jose courtroom was not that low, but it was like a little bit higher than that, but still like a deep, a deep voice. It wasn't, yeah, I don't know. It wasn't, it wasn't significantly higher than what you've heard from other interviews with her. If you just like go on YouTube and watch commencement speeches or TED Talks or, you know, her talking to Bill Clinton onstage. It kind of sounded like that. So.

• 19:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why do you think people are so obsessed with the voice thing? I mean, I had to ask it.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, why are people obsessed with the voice thing? I think it's a curious idiosyncrasy that provides a glimpse into a person that many people think is like a sociopath. It provides a glimpse into someone who is just incredibly bizarre and eccentric and, you know, wore black turtlenecks to look like her idol, Steve Jobs, and supposedly changed her voice in order to concoct this false image of herself and a company that People say it was a house of cards. I don't know. I mean, if it is true that she has changed her voice, it's just like strange, like it's weird. Like, why would you do that? There is supposedly research that says, you know, women with deeper voices tend to be trusted

• 19:51Speaker 01

  more in, you know, business circles, male-dominated business circles. Whether or not she did it because of that, who knows? And again, I don't even know that she changed her voice. So I don't, I can't even say, you know, whether it's fake or real or something in the middle. I have no idea, but you're right. It has like captured the nation's imagination. Every time I do a Theranos story, there's somebody on Twitter who's like, but what did her voice sound like?

• 20:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 20:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Maybe she was just listening to a lot of NPR and wanted to.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Could be, yeah.

• 20:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Melts the tones of Bobby Allen. Bobby Allen is with us here on Big Technology Podcast. He is a tech reporter at NPR, stands for National Public Radio. He's talking to us here with his normal voice, which we appreciate. Why don't we get into some of the four main arguments that Elizabeth Holmes made in her defense? And we can sort of pick those apart when we get back right after this. This episode is brought to you by App Point. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it and prove it's under control.

• 21:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's exactly what App Point does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate. Your data, your cloud, and the agents acting on your behalf. It's how more than 28,000 organizations deploy AI with confidence. So innovation scales without scaling risk. App Point, the unifying trust layer for AI. Head to apppoint.com to see how enterprises deploy AI with confidence. Learn more at avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast. That's avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast.

• 21:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here in the Big Technology Podcast with Bobby Allen, an NPR tech reporter based in San Francisco. Bobby, what happened to you in San Francisco recently? And did that instill faith in the court system for you? Or did you lose some faith in the justice system in San Francisco?

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was on my Vespa and I got hit by a car when I was on my way back from hot yoga, on my way to Four Barrel Coffee. If I died, it would have been the most San Francisco death ever.

• 22:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  You just sounded very sympathetic and then also not sympathetic at all in one sentence.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. I'll be taking tips after the interview. Um, yeah, I'm feeling fine. I broke and dislocated my shoulder. I'm all banged up on my leg, but for the most part, I'm totally fine. But yeah, the California Highway Patrol, since it happened near an on-ramp, it was under their jurisdiction. They closed the case, couldn't find the guy who hit and ran. I'm assuming it's a guy who was a black Mustang, could have been a woman, sure. And yeah, it's a bit of a bummer. I wish, I mean, I thought San Francisco would be camered up, but apparently they don't have cameras on this particular intersection. So there you go.

• 22:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I'm sorry that happened to you and I'm glad you're feeling better. So

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

• 22:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Your health and safety is our number one concern here on the show. So, speaking of health and safety, let's talk about the ways that Elizabeth Holmes might have failed to ensure the health and safety of the people that were using her products and some of the arguments that she might have made in court to say, hey, I'm innocent. That's a pretty good segue. I'm gonna take credit for that segue. So, okay.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  When you, if you deliver a good segue and then say it's a good segue, that's a good segue.

• 23:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Dang it.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like, it's like delivering a good joke and being like, wasn't that a good joke? It's like, no. If you have to say it's a good joke, it was a bad joke.

• 23:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Please clap. Okay, so let's get into these arguments. So, first one. So, this is coming, I, full disclosure, ripped these from Erin Griffith's story. Number one, she had been told by her colleagues that the technology worked. Is that what she said, that that she had been told that the tech worked? Uh, and therefore wasn't in the wrong, but I do remember there being, at least reading John Kerry, whose book, Bad Blood, there were pretty elaborate moves to sort of conceal the fact that the Edison wasn't working in demos and stuff like that. So what do you make of that?

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So she was telling investors that, you know, this Edison device, which when you see pictures of it, it kind of looks like a mini like color printer, you know, that and her idea was that these would be in, uh, you know, homes everywhere and we could just, you know, little pin prick of blood, do hundreds of tests. It could even predict, you know, we're pre-diabetic before we're pre-diabetic and give us a course of care and it would be amazing and fast and cheap. And yeah, totally revolutionize healthcare. But she was saying that that her Edison could do hundreds of tests. She even told Roger Parloff in that now infamous Fortune cover story that it one day will be able to do more than a thousand

• 24:59Speaker 01

  when, you know, in fact, Erica Chung, who was a work, used to work at Theranos and became a whistleblower, said it could do maximum of a dozen tests, right? So the government's saying, yeah, this thing could do 12. And she was saying hundreds. And as she was telling investors hundreds, she like brought in these, uh, commercial lab testing devices. She tweaked them a little bit, didn't tell anyone and then said, oh, that's a trade secret. That's why we're not telling anyone and, and can, and sort of like hid that from everyone. Very, very secretive moves. But that is part of her defense that she didn't exactly know what was going on with the technology, that she wasn't as close to it and its particulars as her lab directors.

• 25:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you find that believable? I mean, it's sort of, to me, that that seems super farfetched.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Um, do I find that believable? Alex, you and I are in different positions. I can't tell you what is believable or not believable. That is for the men and women of the jury to decide. I know you're going to roll your eyes at this, but I can't tell you what's believable. That's not my job. I am the bearer of facts, Alex Kantrowitz. I am not one who makes determinations on the facts. I know you hate me.

• 26:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't hate you. I get it, but it's kind of weak. Okay. Second one is that the broader narrative was more complicated than the prosecution made it seem.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah.

• 26:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  You talked about how it was a little messy.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that's been a theme that the defense has been harping on that basically the government is showing the jury a dirty lens, right? That they have this like super clean cut story of Elizabeth Holmes being this menacing fraudster who is out to dupe Rupert Murdoch of, you know, millions of dollars and that she always wanted to get away with it. And the defense says at one point yesterday, which I thought was really striking, I said yesterday, sorry, I know we're recording on a Friday, but during closing arguments, her defense lawyer had a list of all of the board of directors of Theranos, like the former CEO of Wells Fargo, a former director of the CDC, you know, Henry Kissinger, and

• 27:07Speaker 01

  said, okay, if you wanted to start a company that was basically going to be a shell company that was going to run a criminal enterprise, would you put these people on your board? Because I sure wouldn't.

• 27:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's a good point.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Right? And she, and the defense also said, look, we have like, you know, three patients who testified about faulty results. There are thousands and thousands of patients you haven't heard of. So the government is focusing in on tiny little pictures, tiny little pixels and this very broad picture. And if you really sort of pan out and get the whole picture, it's not a picture of fraud. It's a picture of, you know, a complicated company that made some bad decisions and ultimately unraveled, but she's not a fraudster. That's what, that's what she's saying.

• 27:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  That is interesting. I mean, the argument that she, you would, you wouldn't have all these legendary folks on the board if you're trying to commit a fraud is an interesting one. On the other hand, at a certain point, it's like, a lot of frauds aren't straightforward frauds from the beginning. They start out with good intentions and the problem is like, you know, it's not the crime, it's the cover up often that gets people. And when you get going and, and you have to have a certain level of

• 28:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ability to say, hey, this isn't working when you run a company, when you run a startup, when people trust you with hundreds of millions of dollars.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so to me, that's kind of a weak defense that, oh, these people are on the board. Actually, you know, you probably started out in a good place and you had the people on board to do it, as many companies do.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  But what

• 28:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Problem actually, actually happened was when it was very clear that this thing wasn't living up to its billing and then the lie perpetuated in order to keep it going.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Right. And I mean, what, what the government would say in response to that is, you know, what we learned is that the investors, the board members, every like luminary attached to this company did not do due diligence. Like they let their questions stop at a certain point. Like nobody who invested money like looked at the Edison and opened it up and understood how it actually worked.

• 29:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  For sure. Yeah, exactly. And, and so like, you know, what, once you know you have that going, then you can sort of take some more liberties that you wouldn't if you had some more oversight. And hence, you know, I think this argument is kind of weak. Uh, let's go to, so we talked about, uh, she was told the technology worked. You mentioned a little bit, like one of the arguments is that she was trying to protect trade secrets. Come on, you know, if a trade secret is running a test on somebody else's machine, then you need better secrets.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  No, that's right. John, John Kerry has this amazing line and he's like,

• 29:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Elizabeth Holmes, multi, multi billion dollar innovation was tweaking somebody else's technology and doing it poorly.

• 29:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, exactly. So the trade secret thing doesn't really bear muster, that the narrative is more complicated, the board and all that stuff. Well, yeah, of course it's going to be a little bit more complicated, but it doesn't seem that much more complicated that, that it seems like grounds for acquittal. And then we go to the, I would say probably the most surprising and intriguing storyline of it all was that she was controlled, she's arguing that she was controlled by, uh, her boyfriend and business partner, uh, Ramesh or Sonny Balwani.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  And, and, you know, I think you referenced it a little bit in the, in the first segment, but the, um, the testimony on this was like probably the apex of, of the case. So can you explain a little bit more about like, about what's going on there? We had never heard this before, I believe, until this trial. So what's the argument there exactly?

• 30:50Speaker 01

  No, that's right. That, yeah, that's right. So Sunny Balwani is this dude who made a ton of money during the dot com boom in Silicon Valley. He's 19 years older than Elizabeth Holmes. They struck up a friendship that then evolved into a romantic partnership, then became the number two at Theranos. And even during the rise of Theranos, she kept their relationship surreptitious. She like never revealed it to investors or anyone close to the company, despite them living together, right? But yeah, it came out during the trial and she, she went on the stand and testified to the jury that he manipulated her, controlled her. He would rape her.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  He, um, basically, you know, that he was this mastermind and she was the puppet and that she never told anyone about this abuse, but that the abuse did get in the way of her judgment and affected her in ways that she said she couldn't fully calculate, right?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  And what the government would say is, and they said during their, their closing argument is like, look at members of the jury saying that Elizabeth Holmes is guilty of fraud is not saying that you reject these claims of abuse, right? You can't hold two things to be true at once, that Elizabeth Holmes is a fraudster and that, that her, her claims against, uh, her former intimate partner are true. It doesn't have to be, uh, precluding, right? But it did throw a wrench in the whole thing because it, it turned into this situation where the government went up on the stand and brought all these text messages in, like when one of them referred to the other as Tiger, the other one called, I mean, Sunny then called Elizabeth T. Grass, you know, one called the other my Nirvana. I mean, it was all sorts of like. Really like clawing, like lovey dovey

• 32:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Lovey dovey.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Text messages between them as a way of saying like, oh, you're saying you're being abused. It sure sounds like you're in a loving relationship. Like, how abusive was this? And I will say, Alex, like, that's

• 32:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's weak.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, the spectacle of like, a male prosecutor grilling a young woman about her story of abuse in the Me Too era, I thought that was like a little tone deaf. And you could tell that

• 33:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  You could have actually heard

• 33:00Speaker 01

  She was feeling kind of uncomfortable.

• 33:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  No, totally. I mean, the legal experts I talked to said this could end up backfiring on them. But then the flip side is, well, look, if you're a government prosecutor and you're trying to try this white collar crime of wire fraud, and then the defense is throwing in sexual abuse, you can't leave it unaddressed. Like, you can't just leave that out there because it's going to be like conceding it by implication, right? You've got to say something in response. But their response was to like, question whether or not it happened at all. And some people thought that was like a really bad look.

• 33:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Seems like it's in poor taste. Yeah, you had a really interesting line in your story where you quoted, I think, an expert that said, 11th hour claims of mental or physical abuse are not well received as excuses, especially when the defendant has been living the high life for years, which would apply to Elizabeth Holmes. So it's like, you know, on one hand, she like basically did this, it might have been Hail Mary or ill advised to bring this story in at the, again, the 11th hour. On the other hand, maybe it worked where the government sort of overplayed its hand and, you know, turned a, you know, this, this thing that could have ended up hurting Holmes into something that might have helped her.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's the dynamics at play.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  No, absolutely. And like, really big picture, Alex, like, I think the defense's goal is to just make this look more complicated. Like, all you need to get a hung jury is to get one person to be like, ah, you know what? I kind of believe that she was abused and that she was raped and that that really messed her up. Maybe I know someone in my life who was manipulated by a former partner. We can't convict her because of that. If they get just one person to be really hung up on that. They're not going to all agree. You need a unanimous verdict, and that's kind of a win. She walks out of the courtroom and isn't found guilty, right? And there's so much like that in the defense where they're just like introducing all of these points that hopefully will give at least one juror some hesitation.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  And that's, yeah, that's kind of their strategy here to just make the Theranos story look a lot messier than you and I knew it to be before this trial. Like, if you watch a documentary, if you read the Carrieru book, you have one idea of Theranos, but the defense is like, ah, the devil's in the details, right? And when you really look at the details, it is just a super nuanced picture.

• 35:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. I mean, it is interesting because there's this media portrayal, which I think John Carrieru did a pretty good job telling the story and broke the news, and that's why we're here today. But on the other hand, like, any deep and like, legal discussion of this is going to inherently be more nuanced.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 35:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  And perhaps like the bombshell media coverage might have actually also played Elizabeth Holmes's favor.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Oh, completely.

• 35:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because the jury's just gonna be like, hey, well, that's not what I heard about this, you know, reading this book, or listening to this podcast, or all this stuff.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, completely. I mean, on the cover of Fortune magazine, countless glowing stories about her appearing on TV constantly, and, you know, the backing of former cabinet members, you know, the backing of like the former CEO of Wells Fargo. Like I said, I mean, it's not like she had a bunch of schmoes on the street supporting her technology. I mean, she surrounded herself with some of the most trusted and credible people she could find, right?

• 36:20Speaker 01

  So, yeah, but the media, the media coverage of her, there was a really good piece in the Washington Post that was, that was looking at the media's role in the rise of Theranos, and just how so many journalists, I mean, not just the Fortune magazine story, so many journalists were sort of credulous. I mean, it's such a, I don't want to say seductive, that doesn't feel like the right word, but it is just like such a great story. This, in the male-dominated tech world, this startup founder who drops out of Stanford at age nineteen. Teen, right, has this like fear of needles and then creates this technology that is trying to revolutionize the way you and I, you know, get blood tests. We no longer need needles. I mean, it's and she like looks, she has this look that is like, you know, patterned after Steve Jobs.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  I mean, the whole thing is just like a little too perfect as a narrative arc. And as journalists, Alex, I mean, just saying it out loud, like, it's a great story, is it not? So I could imagine like being a tech reporter during that time and being like, yeah, I want to profile Elizabeth Holmes. That's a huge story. It's a great story. And if I got that assignment, would I go down to Theranos headquarters and demand to like get some screwdrivers out and take apart the Edison and really understand the technology? Absolutely not.

• 37:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  But you might speak to, okay, but you might speak to people, though, that's that, you know, clients and stuff like that.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, but even journalists who did that wrote stories that were like super puff pieces. I mean, The New Yorker did like a 6,000 word piece on Theranos and there was like four critical graphs, right?

• 37:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, well, listen, I think that like, you know, it's, it's interesting. They got taken by Elizabeth Holmes. Do I think you or I would be taken by her? I'd like to think, no.

• 37:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I'm be serious. I think there's a lot of bad journalism out there and I don't think that like I'm going to consign myself to be part of it. We do need a, you know, a degree of skepticism. And I think the practice of like writing hieroglyphs, if you don't even know what's going on in the product is somewhat shameful. And no, I wouldn't participate in that.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'm not trying to apologize for it. And I would hope that I would be better than it as well. But just saying.

• 38:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Bobby, I know you, you'd be better than that.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Thanks, Alex. But the nature, yeah, the, the nature of deadline driven daily journalism is such that you can't turn every story into an investigation.

• 38:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of course, but I'm talking about the 6,000 word New Yorker story. That's the one you brought up.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  The cover story on Fortune. That's one you brought up.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you're not, you're not scrambling to file that by 5pm if you're starting in the morning. If you're writing like a short story on it, fine, but if you spend 6,000 words on The New Yorker on a company that's a fraud and you don't notice that, shame on you.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's actually, let me share this anecdote really quick, Alex. There was a stringer who was doing a story for NPR on Theranos years and years ago and was at, I think, a Walgreens with Elizabeth Holmes and was like asking to like interview a patient and actually see someone get a pinprick of blood because so many patients were getting blood drawn from needles. And the reporter was like, wait, I thought the whole innovation was like, you don't need needles. Like, what's going on here? And she kept pushing Elizabeth Holmes for like, to like, be set up with a patient who was getting the pinprick of blood. And then suddenly a fire alarm goes off. Out of nowhere, and everyone's evacuated. And she was like, that was weird. And like, ended up not doing the story. And it was like,

• 39:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Good on her.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  One of her proudest journalistic moments to be like, something does not pass the sniff test here, right?

• 39:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly.

• 39:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I don't know. Shouldn't, shouldn't be that hard. You've covered a lot of cases. How does this one compare to the other cases you've, you've covered?

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, this one is excruciatingly long. I think any reporter covering Theranos is like, can it please be over? I mean, three and a half months of testimony. And the fact that the reporter's got to get up at like, two or three in the morning to start waiting in line. It's unbelievably long. For the most part, it's dry, right? I mean, the government subpoenaed thousands and thousands and thousands of documents and emails and text messages. And most of the witnesses are going through very technical details about assays, which is a word I didn't know before the Theranos trial, which is a fancy word for a blood test, you know, going through exactly like, you know, the 2.0 of the technology, 3.0 of the techno. I mean, it's just, there is just so many, so many technical details that would make, I mean, you could even see members of the jury sort of like having trouble

• 40:33Speaker 01

  sticking with it at times. I've seen a few people like dozing off in the audience. I mean, for the most part, this is, this trial has not been fireworks. I think Elizabeth Holmes taking the stand had the entire courtroom enwrapped and everyone was really, really, really paying attention to her and what she was saying. But for the most part, it's been long and dry.

• 40:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Okay. This is journalist penance for taking this story at face value. Now you have to wake up at five. You're repenting for the sins, maybe, maybe not of NPR. Clearly, you had a colleague that didn't buy it, but of your predecessors. Okay, let's take one more break and then come back and speak to Bobby about what happens next and what this means for Silicon Valley more broadly. So we'll do that after the break. We'll be back right after this on Big Technology Podcast and we'll see you in just a minute.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid and risked 350,000 Virginians healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 41:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Bobby Allen. He's a tech reporter at NPR, based in San Francisco. He's been waking up so early to go to the Theranos trials, just so he can speak with us about what's going to happen next.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Can I be a special correspondent for Big Technology, Alex? Or am I not up to that level yet?

• 42:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  You're in. Joining us now is Big Technology's special correspondent.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Bobby Allen. We will speak to you in Big Technology Voice.

• 42:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Today in San Jose, something amazing happened.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  So you mocking NPR, like, that really shows me you don't listen to NPR. Because no, very few people sound like that these days, but.

• 42:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, it shows I don't listen to it. You know, I do think that, sorry, I hope this doesn't like, end up in like, your PR team's inbox or something like that.

• 42:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  For the record, I like NPR, I like Bobby.

• 42:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  But yeah, no, I'm glad that you guys have moved beyond that. But no, every time I do listen, like, the echo will play NPR when you ask it for like, what's going on? And it does, it does still sound like that. Maybe you have your connected home device people on that stuff.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  I'll look into it. I'll see what we can do to make everyone sound like you and not like the voice of God, Alex. I will get on that.

• 43:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, I think I've been owned.

• 43:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Um, so, so how is, before we get into what's gonna happen next, um, how are, uh, how's COVID going in, in San Francisco? It seems like everybody in New York has COVID. Do you have COVID, Bobby?

• 43:21Speaker 01

  I don't have COVID. No, I'm getting boosted this weekend.

• 43:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Nice.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Uh, the mask, the mask mandate mandatory for all things indoors just came down a couple days ago.

• 43:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Um, it's, I mean, you know, knock, knock on wood, it seems to be not as bad as New York right now, but, but I guess ti- time will tell.

• 43:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, for the most part, I thi- I think, I think San Francisco's approach has, you know, been seen as kind of impressive, right? I mean, obviously we're not, it's not like we're, you know, the best in the world or something. We're not like Portugal, but, but San Francisco's been taking it very seriously. And every bar and restaurant I go to has someone outside, you know, comparing your state issued ID to your vaccination card. And I've been in other cities where it has not been that diligent. So I've been pretty impressed with how even like, you know, mom and pop stores and dive bars are like taking the mandates like really seriously. I don't know if you found that too, but it's like.

• 44:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  For sure. Yeah. It's the same in New York. Now, I mean, I'm in the middle of waiting for, uh, of, uh, test results, uh, because I went to a concert, uh, earlier this week, LCD sound system, and hopefully, uh, I didn't contract the virus. Um, so we'll find out soon. If, if I end up on the show sounding terrible next week, um, we'll just say it's COVID. Okay, enough about that.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  If, if, if you did get COVID, the, the blood is on James Murphy's hands. I mean, we know that.

• 44:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  We do. We have to blame him. Yeah. Luckily, we're not gonna do a test in a Theranos device.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 44:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Um, I won't compliment the segue there. So what, what happens, uh, next, Bobby? So the jury is deliberating as we speak.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  When can we expect the result and what do you expect to happen?

• 45:02Speaker 01

  So the jury can return a verdict in an hour from now, two weeks from now. There's, there's really no way of predicting. Based on past trials I've covered, the more complicated the case, the longer it takes. I mean, think about the last time like you and your friends went to a restaurant, right? And how the group message went on and on and on and on, just to decide where to like get dinner. Like try to get 12 people to unanimously agree on 11 very complicated counts of wire fraud. Right? It's not something that you can do swiftly. So I think it's going to take some real time. Um, what, I'm not really sure what's going to happen. I, I genuinely like putting my, my journalist hat aside and just talking to you one on one Alex.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  I literally have no idea. I could see it going anywhere. I mean, I could see a guilty verdict. I could see an acquittal. I can see a hung jury. I could, like, like I said earlier, I could see maybe one or two of them really fixating on a detail or two from the defense, whether it be abuse or something else and saying, I just don't think the burden of proof was clear. I mean, during closing arguments, the defense spent a lot of time, which is typical in this kind of trial, explaining just how high the burden of proof is in a criminal trial beyond a reasonable doubt. So if you just have the tiniest iota of doubt that any of the charges happened, you can't convict. I mean, he went over it, Kevin Downey, one of the defense lawyers.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Went over it in like really, really specific detail about just how high that burden is.

• 46:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  A staircase of doubt? Can you describe that?

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

• 46:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  What's that?

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I mean, he was, he was just drawing an analogy to say like, in so other, in so many other parts of, of law enforcement, um, and even the court system, there are different burdens of proof. Like usually to like stop and frisk someone, you need to have the belief that someone committed a crime or is about to commit a crime, right? Uh, reasonable suspicion, they call it, that like something happened. And like a civil trial, it's like the preponderance of evidence. So it's more likely than not that this thing happened. But yeah, criminal trials beyond any reasonable doubt. This thing happened. So it's yeah, it's a it is an extremely high bar. And that's part of the reason, Alex, why you see so few people in Silicon Valley charged with fraud.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Right? I mean, we work and I mean, executives of jewel, there's a lot of startups. Where people have said these people committed fraud or did things that were exaggerating the product or, you know, things that like veered into criminal territory and there may have been investigations launched, but we have yet to see charges. Right? And obviously, every single one of these startups and the executives involved are very like fact specific cases. But part of the story of not seeing charges in Silicon Valley very often is just how how high the bar is. It's convincing a jury beyond a reasonable doubt was a really, really, really hard thing. And the government thinks, do I want to use lots of taxpayer money to bring on this case that's going to end in a mistrial or acquittal? You don't. You want to be confident going in. And because of that high burden.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't. You just don't see a lot of cases out of the Northern District of California. That's where the US Attorney's Office is out here that that polices Silicon Valley or is supposed to police Silicon Valley.

• 48:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, there's a staircase of steps on a staircase of reasonable doubt. This is from a tweet that Aaron Griffith posted last week. There's no evidence, scintilla, reasonable suspicion, probable cause, preponderance of evidence, clear and convincing, reasonable doubt, and then beyond a reasonable doubt. So you really, really need to be sure in order to convict somebody.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 48:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that's why it seems likely that this is going to be, as you mentioned, or as you've sort of talked about over the course of this interview, a hung jury seems likely.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  It's possible. It's definitely possible. I mean, another another way to frame this is not to look at the burden of proof, because that's how people like you and I like thinking about it in this like very rational, logical way. And instead, thinking about it from an emotional valence, like thinking about the way that that the emotional testimony is going to like, stick with the jurors, right? Because emotional testimony, seeing someone cry on the stand, that affects you. And juries can be fickle, juries can be unpredictable, juries don't always, you know, make decisions that everyone agrees are rational decisions. So you just have to see, maybe the abuse stuff is really gonna gonna resonate and really gonna end up, you know, making them all believe that she was not guilty. I don't know.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  You know, maybe maybe the jury will get in there and say, You know, I've been in here for nearly four months, but the most convincing thing is the thing I last heard. And who gets the last word in a criminal trial? Federal prosecutors. So they are gonna have the last word. They're gonna go into, the jury will go into the deliberation room, start talking. And you probably know people, Alex, who like, they're sort of persuaded by the last argument that they heard. If these 12 people are like that, then they're gonna believe the government. I mean, it's just, there's so many different ways to sort of like analytically slice and dice how the jury's gonna render a verdict and what, what facts are gonna stick out, what facts will not stick out. And it's, it's challenging. It's just really, really hard to know what those conversations will look like. But for people like interested in a there and those trial, like there's the

• 50:19Speaker 01

  verdict or lack of verdict. But then, what I think is actually more revealing as a courts reporter is when journalists track down the jurors and have interviews about what was that like? Did people, did people walk out? Oh, completely. Yeah. That's when, that's when you glean real insight and what worked and what didn't. I mean, people like you and I can sit around and speculate all day, but having a few jurors sit down and have on the record conversations about what those conversations actually look like. I mean, that is fascinating. I think that's way more fascinating than the verdict, don't you? I mean, like, how it was reached is way more fascinating than it happened, right?

• 50:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  For sure. Yeah, that's, that's a great story. And then if she's convicted, she goes to jail.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  So if she's convicted, the judge will set a sentencing date, and the prosecutors will say, we want her to be put away for this number of years. And the defense will probably say, we think she should get probation. The judge can split the difference, or he can go on the higher end of the prosecutor's recommendation, or the lower end. It's a big, complicated, nuanced sort of calculation. But she could go to prison. Yeah, the statutory maximum is 20 years in federal prison. Very, very, very unlikely that she would ever get that. Martin Shkreli was convicted of wire fraud, and I think, and you're gonna have to fact check me on this, I think he got seven years, didn't he? Obviously, different cases, but it's another sort of, what do you wanna, what do you, how do you wanna describe

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Martin Shkreli? But another, another high profile fraud case.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  And he got seven. So, uh, yeah, the government's definitely gonna ask

• 51:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Seven years for Martin.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go. He's, he's, he's, they're definitely gonna ask for some prison time. How much? We don't know. Another thing we haven't talked about, Alex, is the fact that she's a new mother, which didn't come up during closings, and I thought it would. But, you know, there's a nursing room in the courtroom so that Elizabeth Holmes can nurse for her, her newborn baby, right?

• 52:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't know that the, I think the jury may know that she's a mother. It wasn't a focus of the trial, but definitely during sentencing, if she is convicted, you can expect the defense to say, you really want to put this new mother behind bars, right? And there's even very cynical people who think that she had a kid specifically timed to her criminal trial as a way of drumming up sympathy. I think that's a really cynical take. But there are people who know Elizabeth Holmes very well, who say this was part of her attempt to get out of this whole thing.

• 52:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wow.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, that would be, that would be next level. So before we leave, let's talk a little bit about the future. If she is convicted, how does it change things for Silicon Valley, if at all? Because there's this line of thinking that Silicon Valley typically likes to promise more than it actually has to offer, these techs, you know, startup tech companies. And if Theranos, which promised more than had to offer, uh, is found and Elizabeth Holmes, uh, you know, is found to be guilty of doing that and committing wire fraud, then, you know, you could end up seeing more cases like this, and that could have a chilling effect on Silicon Valley. I personally think that that's ridiculous. This is a unique case. And, you know, we already know that a lot of the investors weren't even pure

• 53:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Silicon Valley investors, as it were.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 53:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  So it, it seems to me that the argument that this could potentially like chill startup investing, um, or startup creation is a little bit ludicrous, but I'm curious what you think.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  I think it's also ridiculous. I think to say this is a referendum on the valley as, uh, you know, some reporters really like emphasizing that it is. I just don't know what the proof is for that, right? I mean, most of the, like you said, the largest checks came from outside of the valley, like the Rupert Murdochs of the world. Yes, she had some backing, uh, you know, from Tim Draper and others. Pitchbook did a funny analysis of where are the Theranos investors now that the company imploded? And Tim Draper

• 54:19Speaker 01

  In the wake of Theranos falling apart, actually doubled down on his medical device investments, which is that intuitive or counterintuitive? I don't know, but it's just a fact. But yeah, I think Theranos is, what's the Latin phrase? It's a sui generis sort of situation. It's just like such a specific set of facts, such a specific CEO at the center of it. Yeah, startups are always making, you know, huge world-changing promises about their technology, but very few are doing it in the healthcare space. Very few are doing it with, you know, the lives and the, you know, the health of patients on the line, right?

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Like, one of Elizabeth Holmes' early mentors was Larry Ellison, right? Who doesn't have the best track record if you look at some, you know, the things that he promoted early on in his career, vaporware-esque products, right? But he would tell Elizabeth Holmes, you know, early on in a startup, the engineers are always saying, "We can't get this update out to customers by the date you want it to be out," and just ignore that and push them and push them and push them. And I think Elizabeth Holmes took that advice and applied it to Theranos. But, look, like laboratory science is a slow and plodding type of research that, you know, it's not like you can get 50 more coders in a room and do a coding marathon to get

• 55:45Speaker 01

  a software update out to people faster than expected. Science doesn't exactly work that way, right? But I think investors, regardless of what the verdict is, yeah, I agree with you, Alex. Like, I don't think it's gonna have a chilling effect on future investments. I mean, Tim Draper has said on the record, like, and most investors say on the record, right, that, like, "We expect some of our dollars to be lost." I mean, that's why it's called venture capital, right? It's like, you're taking a big risk by placing your money on a dream, on an idea. If it doesn't come to fruition, that's part of the gamble, right? So, yeah, I think it's a little overblown to try to extrapolate too much from Theranos. But that's just me, what do I know?

• 56:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't know, it seems like you know a lot. You've covered a lot of these type of cases. You're a tech reporter for NPR in San Francisco. I trust what you have to say.

• 56:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Bobby Allen is a tech reporter for NPR based in San Francisco. His Twitter handle is Bobby Allen, B O B B Y A L L Y N. Give him a follow there. You could also follow his work on NPR. And Bobby, I want to say thank you for coming by. Appreciate it.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Thanks, Alex. This was really fun. Thanks for having me.

• 56:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  It was a blast. It was a blast. Hopefully, they're still deliberating on Wednesday when this publishes. Otherwise, we'll have to re-record.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Okay, and that will be just as fun. Okay, see you later.

• 57:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, it will. Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Thank you, Nick Watney, for editing and turning this baby around. Thank you to Red Circle for hosting and selling the ads. Appreciate you guys. Thank you, Bobby, again, for joining. And thanks to all of you, the listeners. If you are a new or recent listener and haven't rated us yet, I would love it if you could go to your app of choice, probably Apple or Spotify, if it has a rating system, and tap a five-star rating. That would be much appreciated. And also, I guess, even if you're a recurring listener and you haven't done that yet, we appreciate that. And if you're a new listener and you want to subscribe, it would be great to have you on board.

• 57:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  We do these every Wednesday, stories with tech insiders and outside agitators like Bobby. And we hope to see you again for the next one of these. So thanks again. We'll be back next week with the year-end wrap-up. Oh, my God, 2021 is almost done. And our guest is going to be Casey Newton of the Platformer Newsletter. We always have a good time when Casey comes through, and next week will be no exception. And so we hope to see you then. Until then, everybody, have a great week, and I'll see you next time.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.