I was thinking, you don't really need blockchains for composability/interoperability, you just need open APIs

permissionless composability, blockchains do provide

but if there were theoretically some non-blockchain tech that just exposed open data, and the end-result product that takes advantage of this data is the same, then the blockchain part would not be necessary for the end product

Open APIs can achieve composability without blockchains. Blockchains offer permissionless composability, but open data tech could potentially achieve the same result without the need for blockchain