I see the benefit of off-site access but is the cloud a requirement for that? It seems we have conflated the idea of “network enabled” and “cloud based”.

From a technical stand point I agree. But the unit needs to open a connection to my phone, which is going to require reaching beyond my home network. It's hard to deliver a product to an end user this way, so in these cases the cloud means 'we manage the hard part for you'. So the cloud isn't a requirement, for well... us? But the average consumer, yes. I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here. I'd love a version of Ring where I could easily eliminate the middle man; but I recognize the value in what they've done. How we protect privacy sometimes seems to be an argument of confidence (Our own home network security VS a vendors), there are arguments to be made about centralizing some of it?

I do agree there is an argument to be made for partial centralization. Right now everything is centralized, even some things that I don't think need to be. From a purely technical perspective it seems to me that notification and configuration can be delegated to a third party but the actual video data can remain local.

Yes, because of NAT and needing to setup port forwarding, which most people won’t do.