I think there is some semantics here. A CTO at all levels needs to have an understand of their (1) current stack of technologies and understand how it improves

I think there is some semantics here. A CTO at all levels needs to have an understand of their (1) current stack of technologies and understand how it improves the business (2) a future stack of technologies and how it may improve the business in the future. Specifically this could mean as minuscule as "We're using RoR for our website" to more broad like "We need to have sensors in every food package we ship to manage our supply chain and we use IBM IoT platform to do this". The point is have a defined vision with subsequent technology choice behind it. Whether or not you have a Lt that helps drive those decisions is moot.