based out of an apartheid state

This is badly understating the situation. Israel has horrific goals and works tirelessly to implement them. Cannot be trusted in any way, unless your goals align, and even then not really.

As soon as they are seen to be involved, privacy is entirely off the table, that's the exact opposite of what that place does (and they do it well). Unraveling privacy is critically important to Israel and their genocide.

The evidence is substantial. But if I were a certain tyrant waging an information war, and I were interested in spying on dissidents, I would be looking for ways to spy on and manipulate companies like Kape in ways that aren't publicly visible, because their reputation of independence is valuable. That alone makes PIA not worth the risk for me.

2019 per wikipedia But I too used them for a while after that but before I found out. PIA used to be pretty regularly recommended as a VPN and then it kinda fell off, but I never really knew why.