They almost exclusively hire fresh grads who need money more than ethics, and it shows in everything they do.

Exactly like any other big tech (Google, Microsoft, etc) or consulting (McKinsey, Deloitte, etc) company!

There really isn't anything special about Palantir the company. They have disrupted consulting on marketing alone (all this forward-deployed stuff is more fluff than anything) which is not unheard of, and continue to receive all this bad press due to their clientele and the kind of data they're processing. Government departments, military. They are happy to take credit for all the "conniving" allegations because it makes them look like they have a plan, and anybody with purchasing power involving with them knows it corresponds very little to the company operationally, i.e. what the company does.