That is an utterly unreasonable conclusion.
The same logic resulted in Y2K, which was generally a huge waste of time, money, and resources.
The same logic has resulted in the anemic adoption of IPv6, which is NOT a correct solution, because it doesn't work properly for large swaths of the public.
The correct answer always was, and will continue to be, to use internal routes for internal routing, and external routes for external. Clashes with your LAN? Too fucking bad.
This sort of pushing out of externalizes onto the customer results in the same exact outcome anyway: customer gets screwed.
The customer always gets screwed. Don't rationalize the incompetence of engineers who should know better, and corporate execs who don't give a fuck.
Do that and the FCC will come down on you like a tonne of bricks, and I feel that is absolutely justified.
By their own admission CF receives a ridiculous amount of garbage traffic at this IP, it was not absurd for AT&T engineers in the past to thing "well, we need an IP that we can be reasonably sure nobody is going to use and is never going to conflict with anything on any network, 1.1.1.1 seems reasonable". Seeing everybody in this thread jumping into conspiracy theories instead of the much more likely configuration issue is a bit disappointing for a community that's supposed to understand technology.