I'm sure it's easier for them in a sense. I write software to control cloud based devices that are not adjacent to the caller and they use message based comms. But it's also an unnecessary overhead to upload a 70Mb file to the cloud and back down again. If I were writing this software I'd consider some shortcut mechanism where the send file action could be sent to the printer directly and only fallback to cloud if that was not possible. If for no other reason that saving myself money and general responsiveness. I'm sure it would be achievable by doing a UPnP scan of the local network and allowing the PC to talk to the printer if it possesses and sends an API key - much like Octoprint works. Also, local network probably helps for the camera which could just blast a feed out on UDP.

I'm not sure it helps them "steal" models because they probably have 100,000s of models passing through their system every day. It would be a wall of noise and random junk. And these aren't models in the CAD sense, but some STL meshes and print settings. It does give Bambu information about what filaments people are using and in what quantity, the frequency they print as well as geographic location. That might be useful for marketing. If a government was interested in a particular user, they could also see in retrospect what they were printing. e.g. if someone were printing gun parts then maybe there would be evidence of that in the cloud.