There's a sort of mirror world of academic research happening, where on one side of the mirror, you have people building the tools to censor the internet (typically but not always in Asian venues), and on the other, the tools to circumvent that censorship (typically but not always in Western venues). I know far more people on the latter half of the equation, but have enough exposure to the other side of the mirror to know that most of them earnestly believe they're doing something good. They see massive megacorportaions pushing American interests as an unfair lever in a fight for national sovereignty, and what they do as simply leveling the playing field, and combating misinformation. While I would wholeheartedly agree that they are mistaken in their analysis (reifying systems for people, "The institution I'm supporting may sometimes do bad things, but what I do is supporting the good parts!") and should immediately stop, I wouldn't want to dehumanize them any more than I would someone who works for Palantir, or even Google, Amazon, etc.

It's not OK to work for Palantir either.