The trial of Elizabeth Holmes gets under way

A CROWD OF reporters, drawn by the drama and glamour of the event, jostled outside a courtroom in San Jose on August 31st to witness the opening of what may be the next, perilous, act for a woman once touted as the next Steve Jobs and the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Jury selection was beginning for the fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the former boss of Theranos, a startup which attempted to revolutionise the process of blood testing but failed spectacularly in 2016 after the press and regulators probed the company’s inflated claims.

These sorts of cases usually hinge on subtle distinctions between exaggeration and outright deceit and whether such deceit was intentional. But legal intricacies may take second place to theatrics. Will Ms Holmes take the stand in her own defence and risk the spotlight of cross-examination? Will she claim “coercive control” by her second-in-command at Theranos, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani? Mr Balwani will be tried separately in January; he has denied Ms Holmes’s claims.

The story of Ms Holmes is an epic of Silicon Valley hubris. She brought charisma to the corporate world, adorning many magazine covers. She relentlessly promoted her firm to a valuation of $9bn in 2015 before its demise. The attention lavished on Theranos seemed justified for a time. In 2015 Joe Biden, then...