The Saudi Arabia item was overblown. Someone made an example of finding clusters around social networks that happened to identify people opposed to some government idea. It was not prepared as client work.

Generally in consulting you do have people working for both sides of an issue (commonly a supplier and a buyer, for example). There are heavy handed rules about preventing people working on or who have worked on projects for either side from discussing the issue to avoid this. Assuming normal controls work as intended, the conflict of interest is generally handled sufficiently.