Was it a large company? Is it possible that the interviewer was considering multiple positions and did not know which one you would have been assigned to? But more important. Did the interviewer mention possible follow up interviews?

It was a rather large company with a wide range of products. It makes sense that they were considering multiple positions but they did not mention a single one of them in the interview. I have zero knowledge. They mentioned a follow-up appointment for social and psychological assessment, so yet again a one-way street.

It sounds like a variant of the "one-way interview", which seems to be gaining in popularity based on a cursory internet search. It's more efficient for the company.

@MichaelMcFarlane I think it's debatable as to whether it's more efficient for the company. The company can learn a lot about a candidate based on the questions he or she asks. It also tends to turn off qualified candidates who know they can look elsewhere.

What does it matter what the advantages are? They're wasting less of their time at your expense. And they're screening for highly compliant and desperate candidates, ones that are too afraid to ask questions or make waves. Those candidates are the same kind of employees that won't say anything when they're being sexually harassed or when they're asked to do unpaid overtime. Let's not pretend that such predatory companies do not exist. They certainly do. For what type of job was this by the way?

Is this a sort of a first-job type thing, or at least a situation where there's a massive asymmetry of power? For instance, back in the day I went to a group interview, which I would consider ludicrous now that I have more options.

Are there multiple interviews?

"Why would a company put that much effort into making a bad impression? I am still willing to believe that there are some advantages that I am not able to see at the moment." <- this sounds like a great candidate for the one allowed question at the end.

The "keyword response" aspect is also a red flag. To me both signal that the interviewer doesn't know what they're talking about in any way, and is just going through kabuki rorschach blot fakery. Total BS, run.

I can only imagine they treat their employees the same way. Here is the keyword of a task you should do, don't ask us any questions and get to work.

Very uncommon, but it could be a startup or research division working on something big, or you might have been identified as working for a competitor, but even then they could take the questions and tell Zoe what Zoe can know and what not (yet),

In the U.S., I interviewed for a job position that required a Secret or Top Secret clearance (that I didn't have). About every question I asked about the position or the company came back as "Sorry, can't answer that," usually because of the security levels. Other companies don't want to divulge Proprietary information or Intellectual Property to a person that is not working for them.

@ThomasMatthews I work on a team that requires a clearance and we interview a lot of people who aren't cleared yet and we answer questions. Not questions like "where's the big red button"--but "what tech stack will we be using", "what are the working hours like", "how is the QA process handled", etc., we answer all of those. (Even "what building will I be working in" and "is the building a secure container or can I bring my cell phone in".)

...the only way that would happen for us is if you are interviewing for a contract that hasn't been awarded yet or something of that nature. Or sometimes companies will hire speculatively and then try to find a contract/team to put you on after they have hired you. But if that was the case, they did a really bad job of explaining it to you, and honestly they should have been able to give at least some generic answers (most of our teams use tech stacks roughly like this, etc.).

If they want to avoid to repeatedly answer the common questions, then they should send the FAQ before the interview (and still allow questions during the interview which are not answered in there).