I was thinking about it differently. I understood the potential harm on paper, but I think I was still pretty immature. I thought I would be willing to put aside morals (eg working for companies like Palantir) to work on interesting cutting edge things.

But when I started working and found myself doing equally cutting edge research, but genuinely for the public benefit, I realized I definitely wouldn't be comfortable with putting aside my morals like that. Maybe I didn't really believe this was an option back then.