To expand on this: certain people have learned how to capitalize on “nerdiness” - i.e. how to virtue signal in a way so that investors and general public treat you like an engineering genius.

Elizabeth Holmes persuaded for years that she was a groundbreaking innovator, even with non-existent product. Other manipulators are smart enough to have a real product that protects them via benefit of a doubt. Society is still not immune to people like that.