If I’m a military supplier of nukes to the government, I can freely use GPL and there’s no legal issue with that. You cannot request the nuclear launch software or the guidance control software even if they use GPL licensed code within it. Why? Because they don’t distribute said code to the public. If you develop something for private use, and it never gets a public release there’s no obligation or requirement to release the source! This is especially true for a government contractor that only makes software for a single customer (the government).

I think we’re agreeing that your claim was nonsense at this point, but I still don’t understand where people get these strange ideas about how GPL stops commercial or military use outside of very specific and frankly niche ways. If this is your reason for preferring GPL, it’s poorly thought out.

In purely private (or internal) use—with no sales and no distribution—the software code may be modified and parts reused without requiring the source code to be released. For sales or distribution, the entire source code needs to be made available to end users, including any code changes and additions—in that case, copyleft is applied to ensure that end users retain the freedoms defined above.