Yup, but Article 3 point 2.a has a fairly strict definition, where for an entity outside of the US to be considered as "offering service" to EU members requires some kind of strict ties. The de facto examples is offering a product by specifically mentioning payment in Euro, or having presence on an domain with a top level TLD of a member state. If there's no ties that shows the offering is made to EU members, it doesn't apply.

Very very little tie is required (eg: just having one employee in the EU in a 50,000 people org would do it right there), but the law has been fairly consistently interpreted as such.

I get where you're coming from, but this isn't a if or but or theoretical. Its just how GDPR gets applied. I probably confused things by trying to introduce poor analogies, when the law itself is fairly clearly interpreted a specific way.