I don't know about the other projects. To me, it says that the funding model has eaten the reason for the Lab existing.
Feeding the hype machine that generates donations is considered more important than the work (not to mention the truth-seeking function of academia) the donations are supposed to fund.
There needs to be some serious house-cleaning if they want to be considered an actual research lab of any repute. Ito was a problem, but he quite clearly was not the only one.
Academic donation seeking is a much easier thing to disconnect from real world ROI than most businesses can get raising capital. And 99.9% of businesses are not the 5 unicorns you read about in the media.
I think to a certain extent that's actually fine. An academy should not be run as a corporation; I think that notion is part of what is causing problems.
What academia should not be divorced from is knowledge and truth seeking. I don't mean that in some wooly, idealistic sense: if that isn't the focus, you're hucksters and frauds, not academics.
Feeding the hype machine that generates donations is considered more important than the work (not to mention the truth-seeking function of academia) the donations are supposed to fund.
There needs to be some serious house-cleaning if they want to be considered an actual research lab of any repute. Ito was a problem, but he quite clearly was not the only one.