Where did I claim my personal experience gave me insight into C-suite decisions? I haven't appealed to personal experience for anything - I've cited court rulings, financial data, and documented executive behavior. But since you've brought it up, now I will.
In my experience, people want to believe they're good, that they're doing good things, and that the institutions they're associated with are good. You say you "know some fairly high-up folks in Cupertino" - taking that at face value, that means either: (a) you're of similar status, in which case they may be personal friends or peers you naturally view charitably, or (b) you're of lesser status and get social capital from knowing high-status people, which creates its own incentives to view them favorably.
But here's the thing: "knowing someone" to some unknown degree doesn't give you access to their innermost thoughts and beliefs. You're inferring their true convictions from their behavior and what they tell you - the very behavior I'm arguing demonstrates something other than absolute commitment to privacy principles. It's easy to believe you'd stand on principle when your financial interests happen to align with it - the real test is when they conflict, and we're seeing that now.
This is actually why having some distance gives _more_ insight, not less. Every white-collar criminal convicted of horrific personal or corporate malfeasance has had plenty of people vouching for them based on "knowing them" - shocked that this person they knew would have done what the evidence clearly showed they did.
The San Bernardino case you cite as evidence of Apple's privacy conviction? That was 2016, when Apple's business interests happened to align with privacy advocacy - their profit center was hardware, not surveillance capitalism like Meta or Google, so taking a stand cost them nothing and disadvantaged competitors. It also came during Obama's administration and Trump's first term, when the costs of corporate pushback against government demands were considerably lower than they are now, for reasons I've outlined elsewhere.
Here's the reality: the theory that corporations act in their financial interest is almost completely predictive. The theory that "good guys at the top" will protect principles when those principles conflict with tens of billions in market cap? Not so much.