She Was Not Selling a Machine. She Was Selling the Future.

That may be the most important lesson of Theranos.

Elizabeth Holmes did not need to demonstrate a fully functioning revolution in order to convince people to invest in it.

She needed people to believe that the revolution would work soon.

Silicon Valley had already built a culture around the phrase fake it till you make it. Technology companies launched unfinished products, grew before becoming profitable, and promised solutions to problems they had not yet solved.

But there is a crucial difference between selling an unfinished vision and making false statements about what a medical product can actually do.

In software, a bug may cause an app to crash.

In laboratory medicine, an incorrect test result can change a medical decision.

Theranos therefore belonged to an entirely different moral category from yet another overvalued internet startup.

And yet, many of the same Silicon Valley mechanisms worked in its favor.

Holmes also created an extremely clear personal identity. Black turtlenecks, dark clothing, minimalist aesthetics, and uncompromising language about the future created obvious associations with Steve Jobs.

She was no longer simply the CEO of a medical technology company.

She became the company’s icon.

And people wanted to believe in the icon.

When Status Replaces Competence

Theranos also surrounded itself with some of the most respected names in American politics, diplomacy, and defense.

The company’s board eventually included people with enormous authority and political capital.

That created another layer of legitimacy.

And this is where a mechanism appears that stretches far beyond Theranos: people use other people’s trust as a shortcut.

If a former Secretary of State believes in the company, perhaps the technology must work.

If billionaires are investing, perhaps someone has already carried out the technical due diligence.

If major media outlets put the founder on their covers, perhaps the journalists have investigated the claims.

If Walgreens is working with the company, perhaps Walgreens has tested the technology.

And suddenly an entire system of highly intelligent people can be standing around looking at one another while almost no one is properly looking at the machine itself.

That is why Theranos is far more interesting than Elizabeth Holmes alone.

She is the central figure, but the fraud also shows how prestige can begin functioning as a substitute for verification.

Money validates the story.

The story attracts more money.

Famous people attract media attention.

Media attention attracts more investors.

The investors themselves then become evidence that the media story must be true.

It is a perfect circle.

Until someone opens the machine.

John Carreyrou Broke the Illusion

The decisive crack appeared through Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou’s investigation in 2015.

His reporting revealed that Theranos was, to a large extent, not using its own technology for the tests it offered and that there were serious questions surrounding the performance of its equipment and the reliability of its test results.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of that kind of journalism.

Theranos had money.

Theranos had lawyers.

Theranos had investors.

Theranos had political heavyweights.

Theranos had public relations machinery.

And Holmes had a story that much of the technology world had already decided it wanted to love.

The journalist’s job became the simplest and at the same time the most difficult question:

Does the machine work?

The answer changed everything.

The Conviction of Elizabeth Holmes

Holmes was indicted in 2018, and her federal trial concluded in January 2022.

It is important to be precise about the verdict because the Theranos story is often simplified.

The jury found Holmes guilty of one count of conspiracy to defraud investors and three counts of wire fraud connected to individual investors.

She was acquitted, however, on the charges accusing her of defrauding patients, and the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict on three additional investor-related counts.

In November 2022, she was sentenced to 135 months in prison — eleven years and three months.

Holmes and Balwani were later ordered to pay more than $452 million in restitution to Theranos investors.

Her conviction and sentence were subsequently upheld by a federal appeals court in 2025.

The legal chapter therefore became something far more concrete than the story of an entrepreneur whose startup simply failed.

Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of fraud.

But Who Is Elizabeth Holmes When the Camera Keeps Rolling?

This is where You Can See Everything becomes especially interesting.

We already know the business story.

Books have been written.

Documentaries have been made.

Podcasts have been produced.

Amanda Seyfried won an Emmy for portraying Holmes in the drama series The Dropout.

And yet Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim returned to the human being behind the story.

The film begins shortly before Holmes enters prison.

She is now a partner, a mother of young children, and a convicted criminal.

The spectacular Silicon Valley stage is gone.

The camera is inside the home.

But the question of what is real does not disappear.

If anything, it becomes larger.

Holmes continues to maintain her own version of events and her innocence.

At the same time, the film begins to play with reconstructions and with the boundary between documentary and staging.

An actor is used to recreate situations.

Billy Evans becomes increasingly important after Holmes enters prison, and according to reports, he also attempts to influence how the project develops.

Fielder himself has said that he still struggles to fully understand exactly what he experienced during the three years of filming.

That makes the film potentially far more interesting than a simple story about a liar.

It becomes a story about the construction of reality itself.

What Happens If the Fraudster Believes Her Own Story?

There is a simple version of the Elizabeth Holmes story:

An intelligent young woman deliberately built a fraudulent company, deceived investors, and went to prison.

But there is a psychologically more disturbing possibility.

Human beings may be capable of moving back and forth between lying, self-deception, ambition, and conviction until the boundaries become almost impossible to separate.

You can know that today’s machine does not work while still believing that tomorrow’s machine will.

You can lie about a result and convince yourself that the lie is only a temporary step toward a larger truth.

You can begin by playing the role of a visionary and eventually no longer know where the role ends.

None of that excuses anything.

But it may explain a great deal.

And that is precisely why Elizabeth Holmes remains fascinating.

The Real Theranos Question Is Not About Holmes

There is something convenient about turning Holmes into a monster.

If she is an extraordinary exception, then the rest of the system does not need to change.

But Theranos could never have become Theranos simply because Elizabeth Holmes was persuasive.

Hundreds of millions of dollars had to be invested.

Boards had to say yes.

Companies had to sign agreements.

Journalists had to publish profiles.

Investors had to accept secrecy.

Experts had to be ignored.

Whistleblowers had to be challenged.

And people had to repeatedly choose the attractive story over the inconvenient verification question.

That is the part of Theranos that remains highly relevant in 2026, perhaps more than ever.

We live in an economy where visions can be valued at billions before the products are finished.

Entrepreneurs are expected to sell the future.

Companies build narratives around artificial intelligence, biotechnology, energy, spaceflight, and other technologies whose consequences few investors are personally qualified to evaluate.

That does not mean visionaries are fraudsters.

But Theranos teaches us that vision must never replace verification.

Why the New Film Could Matter

The title You Can See Everything is almost provocatively perfect.

Because Theranos was always about what people could see.

They saw Elizabeth Holmes.

They saw the black turtleneck.

They saw the billion-dollar valuation.

They saw the investors.

They saw the politicians.

They saw Walgreens.

They saw the magazine covers.

They saw a revolution.

But very few people saw what was actually happening inside the machine.

The new film appears to ask the same question one more time, except now it is aimed at the person behind the machine:

If we are allowed to see Elizabeth Holmes up close — at home with her children, facing prison, without the conference stages and the billion-dollar valuations — will we finally understand her?

Perhaps.

But the film’s most interesting possibility may be the opposite.

Perhaps you can see almost everything and still not know what is true.

After all, that was exactly how Theranos worked.