It's just a bad error. Spark Connect probably showing a not-so-useful section of the stack-trace.

creating a view over files using an abfss path --> this is the "cloud storage path" I'm talking about. If this was not registered as a UC external location then it falls into the legacy TACL path (hence the need for ANY FILE).

For Volume (assuming your files are in the registered UC Volume), if you try something like this, do you get an error? This is run from Serverless Notebook and I'm creating a view over files in a volume. (this won't require you to give the ANY FILE grant). This same command should work from UC-Standard and DBSQL as well.