Sounds more to me like they were naive when it came to the inevitable PR war that would follow. They should have come out guns blazing with all the dirt they had. Instead they said very little and it just appeared nonsensical.
Except that I don't think it was for PR reasons that almost the entire company sided with Altman. I'd say it has much more to do with the profitability and the goal of continuing to work on interesting problems with the best resources.
