Why Michael Lewis got Sam Bankman-Fried so wrong
If you’re old enough, it isn’t difficult to grasp why Michael Lewis got it so wrong in his book about Sam Bankman-Fried , called Going Infinite . It’s worth rehashing a very specific moment in time from two decades ago to get a deeper understanding. When the US made the decision to invade Iraq for… reasons — mostly imagined — there was a set of operating procedures for many US journalists: either you embed with US troops, or you’re on your own, and if you get killed, well, then I guess that’s that. It set an unfortunate precedent for journalism in a war zone: one couldn’t even attempt to report what the enemy was saying without putting oneself in grave danger and the end result was an obedient press corp. This is to say that most journalists weren’t about to report atrocities or discuss the severe character flaws of certain individuals if they were forced to rely on them for survival. The belief that the fifth estate would fall in line was correct, and coverage of...