They could start with being honest that those aren't the DoD's only motive behind wanting such a corpus and analytical model.
There are many positive and negative things that could result from something like this, and it isn't the fact that the Navy is doing it that scares people. It's the fact that the US government is doing it.
They could start with being honest that those aren't the DoD's only motive behind wanting such a corpus and analytical model
That would be akin to asking [insert company] if it will possibly ever use data collected from one thing on a different project at some later date. That is a complete unknown, so it wouldn't even be appropriate to put into a proposal, as they have specific formats.
NPS is a graduate study program, with a research component and long history of academic publishing. Whether that data could possibly, someday be used beyond that is completely out of scope for this solicitation. Further, if other groups in the military wanted similar data, they would likely not go to NPS for it, for a variety of reasons.
I think at the end of the day though, if someone has an assumption that everything the DoD does or messages to the world is somehow subterfuge, there's no amount of discussion that would reverse that feeling.
Ignoring your false dichotomy, it should be fairly obvious what some of the negative consequences of such an analysis of a large corpus of social data could provide for the US government, a totalitarian state with a long history of infiltrating and manipulating social movements.
I'm also a realist and understand that this kind of analysis is inevitable and will eventually be continuous. I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be done.
There are many positive and negative things that could result from something like this, and it isn't the fact that the Navy is doing it that scares people. It's the fact that the US government is doing it.