These IPs have been unused since so long, that using these for private networks is absolutely not uncommon.

Somehow the discussion seem to point to China and Russia, but I know a ton of EU companies that use these ranges.

You can debate semantics all you want, it doesn't change the reality of the situation and how the problem of IPv4 address exhaustion is very real and not just down to "incompetent network staff".

The DoD sitting on all that unused address space actively contributed to that problem and now it's exploiting band-aid fixes around it to once again play data kranken of the world under the guise of "We are just fighting APT!".

It’s pretty clear that the DoD realizes how close they were to being forced to sell all that IP space off and wouldn’t have even been able to say “we’re using it” as it wasn’t routed.

IP address space doesn’t have to be announced to the internet in order to be in use, or require global uniqueness.

Look, if you want to come someone's IP address for your internal network, that's fine, what you do in your private network is your business. But don't blame the owner when they say "hi, I exist" and you forgot to configure your routers to ignore them. It's not the DoD's fault that other netops didn't bother break the rules in a safe way.