[fnorder]

I agree with you, but every reason you just listed is a positive from the perspective of their customers.

I think it's practically guaranteed that Palantir is, or will be, blackmailing officials. Even if they never do, any lucid official will be very conscious of stepping on the toes of a private intelligence company.

[kurthr]

Or they can go the other direction and offer foreign powers protection for money.

The incentives are aligned that way so it would require surveillance and conspiracy to prevent it from happening.

Furthermore, collecting large amounts of information on your own population creates a lowest effort point of entry for an adversary to gather that info, and it's more useful to them.