The issue today is that the leadership (in many areas of life from business to military to government), who make the decision to kill/censor/interrupt business/etc or not, are saying "we have to follow the data" without having any understanding of what that really means.

Ultimately, this creates false confidence both in the decision-maker and those that are following their lead. I find it unlikely that there would be anywhere near the same willingness if the 'intelligence' many of these decisions were based on didn't seem as rich and unmistakably correct as it often does.

Of course, the practical effect here is that leadership gets to blame the algorithm/model/data instead of having to accept the blame themselves. If only those pesky engineers and nerds in the lab were better at the job we'd bomb less foreigners.