James Mattis

Mattis was born in Pullman, Washington, on September 8, 1950. He graduated from Columbia High School in 1968 and joined the Marine Corps Reserve the following year. He earned a history degree at Central Washington State College in 1971 and was commissioned a Marine second lieutenant on January 1, 1972. The institution was subsequently named Central Washington University.⁠[2][1]

During the Gulf War, Lieutenant Colonel Mattis commanded 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. He later commanded the 7th Marine Regiment and served as the Defense Department’s executive secretary for William Perry and William Cohen. In 1994 he earned a master’s degree in international security affairs at the National War College.⁠[2]

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Mattis led Task Force 58 in southern Afghanistan. He commanded the 1st Marine Division during the 2003 Iraq invasion, subsequently led Marine Corps combat development, and in 2006 was selected to command I Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine forces assigned to Central Command.⁠[2]

Mattis was promoted to four-star general on November 9, 2007, taking command of U.S. Joint Forces Command while also serving as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation. He commanded U.S. Central Command from 2010 to 2013 and retired in 2013. His rank was four-star general.⁠[2][1]

Mattis met Holmes in 2011 and was interested in battlefield blood testing. He wanted comparative testing before joining the board, but it had not happened by his retirement.⁠[3]

Mattis served on TheranosTheranosTheranos was a blood-testing company founded in 2003 by Elizabeth Holmes and based in Palo Alto, California, which offered retail testing with Walgreens and was valued at up to $9 billion before regulatory sanctions and criminal charges over alleged fraud in its technology and financial claims led to its dissolution in 2018.Open the full entry’s board from 2013 to 2016, personally invested about $85,000, and resigned on December 16, 2016.⁠[3]

Mattis served as secretary of defense from January 20, 2017, through December 31, 2018. Because fewer than seven years had passed since his military retirement, Congress granted an exception to the appointment restriction, signed by President Trump as Public Law 115-2 on his inauguration day. George Marshall had previously received such a waiver.⁠[1]

Mattis is the Hoover Institution’s Davies Family Distinguished Fellow. His books include Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, and he co-edited Warriors & Citizens: American Views of Our Military.⁠[4]

Mattis testified at Holmes’s trial about Theranos’s military relationship. The Ninth Circuit later summarized that battlefield use of the Edison had been explored but never materialized: the device was not fielded by the military, installed on a military medevac, or used to treat servicemembers on the battlefield.⁠[5]