Oh I agree. My suspicion is that Apple’s intent was to revoke their developer account/iTunes Connect access but not attempt to enforce their inability to use XC

Oh I agree. My suspicion is that Apple’s intent was to revoke their developer account/iTunes Connect access but not attempt to enforce their inability to use XCode; there may be legal language to that effect but you’ve been able to install XCode and generate iOS provisioning profiles without a developer account for some time now. I can’t imagine that any Apple executives think the recent anti-trust hearings went so well that they think they can get away with this sort of snipe.