From my prelimary search, Bicep does utilize a state file, but it is completely hidden from the end users. Seems to be managed in Azure directly and automagically.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manag...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manag...
Not sure how I could "misunderstand" this quote to mean anything else.
By that logic, CloudFormation is also the same; end users don't have access to the state so therefore the state file is the state of the environment itself? We, as users, have no idea what intermediate step exists between the configuration yaml and actual representation of an account's resources.