Google Analytics data isn’t tied to ad targeting. Google doesn’t profile you based on data from sites you visit with GA.
According to google, it is: “Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse, and personalize content and ads you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps”.
The article's use of that verbiage is deceptive. I think it's not actually a lie, but it's misleading.
When you use the Google Analytics product, Google is a Processor under GDPR and a Service Provider under CCPA. They are contractually bound not to process that data beyond providing the service to you, which is dashboards. It is illegal for them to dip into this data for their own purposes without additional authorization from the customer. (Note that in contrast, when you include a Facebook share button, Facebook is a Joint Controller and not a Processor.)
Sharing Google Analytics data with Google is possible but optional. It's fairly easy to do and encouraged (it enables certain features), but those checkboxes have big legal terms next to them that tends to give people pause.
In particular, the Advertising Features setting allows Google to make a connection between Google Analytics data and Google Ads or DoubleClick data.