Writing restrictions into the license makes sense in theory. Actually enforcing that license against an uncooperative company will take far more time, money and effort than most people are willing to spend.
Certainly an individual dev could pull in a library with a non permissive license without the broader business being aware. Or, I do agree, there may be particularly corrupt companies that knowingly violate terms of a license... But that's going to be less common than not.
Having worked for big tech, I can assure you they are very strict with licensing.
In this case it's a fast and loose startup, so I agree that it may have happened regardless. But at a certain scale these kind of things will be caught.
But you're not going to get AWS cloning your project if your license doesn't permit it.
That being said, AFAIU violating the GPL of the Linux kernel is very common in the embedded world. A lot of that is made in places largely out of reach of Western IP laws, and by the time anybody gets around to do something, the fly by night company responsible has ceased existing, replaced by a new company currently working on a device five generations ahead, again committing GPL violations.
which means either the market they serve don't care, or don't have enforcement within reach of the western courts. But then, them "stealing" GPL nor not won't really affect the owner of the GPL software, since the world would've been the same to them whether the fly-by-night company violated them, or did not exist in the first place.