The issue is to try and focus on making a good cloud that startups etc would like to use. That should be the goal. If the goal is not being strategically dependent then it'll never work.

I feel like framing this as non technical executives are somehow being decieved by big bad technical folks and thus should "skill up", is a potential recipe for disaster.

I suspect most situations aren't "can't do that" it's "can't do that within the realm of choices you guys already made to accomplish other things...". Executives coming along with "nuh uh, can to, took a class!" I suspect won't help.

"Self hosting is easy because you can just buy a PC and have stuff run on that PC" is a pretty weird take. Yes, you can store files on a PC and even run some code or a web server, but to use a PC as a server is crazy. And I say this because I have actually seen this.

That said, yes, nothing is impossible (although at a chip level things get more complicated). You need resources and a sense of purpose or urgency.

Side note: executives don't need tech skills because of sovereignty issues, they either need them in general (e.g. AI role and limits, lock-in, open source, security, ...) or they don't. This is just one aspect of IT where executives are, or may be, involved. And to be honest, if digital sovereignty is totally possible, executives may be ignorant, but doesn't that make consultants ignorant, too (at best)? You can't totally shift blame like this.