The book is well reported.

They weren't making fast enough progress to meet the targets they had set, and resorted to fraud as a result, gaming results, obfuscating what technology was actually being used, etc. They had other problems, such as poor lab quality control and rampant employee turnover. (I tried for a few chapters to keep all the characters straight, then realized that most of them would be gone by the next chapter.) I think the book focused on what happened based on what they did do, not what would have been theoretically possible if they had approached things differently, and were different people.