This underlying much of the non-coding AI revolution (and some of the coding perhaps) - so much corporate activity is write-only and never read.

The trope about external consultants is that your VP brings them in to review the company, and they talk to everybody and write a report on how to improve the business, and the report says exactly what you've been telling your VP but they've been ignoring you.

You are closer to the truth :)

they are not simply paid to do nothing. They are paid to do dirty work.

They are paid to justify decisions executives have already made. It's often referred to as due diligence, but in practice these reports mostly just allow executives to tell the board it wasn't their fault if it goes wrong.