“You Can See Everything,” the documentary capturing disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ final weeks before prison, is sparking national conversation as it becomes one of the highest-grossing documentaries of all time. The film, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, intentionally refuses to characterize Holmes as a master manipulator or victim, instead highlighting her uncanny, almost hypnotic knack for making people pity her, even when they’re well aware of her crimes.
Parallels to Theranos in the Tech Sector
Tyler Shultz was a key whistleblower who exposed Theranos and its dangerously inaccurate blood testing devices, which made their way into Walgreens stores and delivered faulty results to real patients. Theranos reached a peak valuation of around $10 billion despite its technology never actually working, as the company outsourced tests to third-party equipment.
There is little reason to keep talking about Holmes — her case is closed, and she’s in federal prison — but her con-artistry has fascinated the media (myself included) for the last decade.
In fact, as Shultz says in an interview with The San Francisco Standard, “the only reason we’re talking about Elizabeth Holmes right now is because she wants us to be talking about Elizabeth Holmes right now.”
AI Boom and Investor Due Diligence
The cautionary tale of Theranos takes on a new significance as the tech sector enters a peak era of artificial intelligence, where companies that have never turned a profit raise capital at massive valuations.
Shultz noted that early-stage funding practices have scaled dramatically from informal investments to millions of dollars poured into unproven ventures.
His grandfather, former U.S. Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury George Shultz, was a notable investor and board member himself.
Investors must recognize that putting substantial funds into unverified startups grants founders tremendous power and financial leverage.
Theranos frequently bypassed traditional venture capital firms that demanded strict scientific evidence, relying instead on individual investors while citing trade secrets to avoid sharing technical verification.
The Difficulty of Vetting Artificial Intelligence
When Theranos collapsed, it served as a wake-up call for better investor due diligence. However, in the artificial intelligence era, Shultz worries that those hard-earned lessons are being forgotten.
A major danger with artificial intelligence is the sheer difficulty of conducting thorough due diligence. It is often challenging to distinguish genuinely unique technological breakthroughs from basic wrappers built on top of existing models, creating a prime environment for deception.
The first question posed by “You Can See Everything” lies in the premise of the movie itself. Why would a mother of two young children choose to invite a film crew to follow her final days with her family before surrendering to serve a prison sentence of over 11 years? The film poses questions that seem inscrutable, but this one seems pretty clear. She wants people to pity her, because this pity could be more useful for her future endeavors than hate or mockery.
In the film, we see Holmes and her partner, hotel heir Billy Evans, working on Haemanthus, a diagnostics company that they call “Theranos 2.0,” which has reportedly raised about $20 million in funding.
“You Can See Everything” doesn’t make Holmes look good, but it also glosses over the more heinous crimes of Theranos, like giving dangerously faulty medical information to real patients, or even its targeted harassment of Shultz himself when he was attempting to sound the alarm about his former employer. In the cultural zeitgeist, Holmes remains more of a joke than a persona non grata.
“I have this feeling of unease about what might come next,” Shultz said. “She’s certainly preparing and beginning her second act, and I don’t know exactly where it’s going to go.”
