Your arguments make sense that the attack capacity continues to advance on many fronts (of course, the easy exploits like social engineering still remain the most common exploits by far — in raw numbers and probably in terms of impact as well). I would argue though that the existence of advanced attack capability doesn’t mean that the securable surface area of computing functionality can’t also grow over time.
I can probably agree that none of apple’s actions have significantly affected the percentage of computing functionality used in society that is comprisable at low cost — however I do think that Apple can choose to act to (1) increase the average cost to compromise (2) expand the (incredibly small) set of functionality which is not trivial to compromse.
I don’t think that any truly expert 3-letter agencies can reasonably oppose those goals in a way that completely prevents them from advancing. I think it would be self-defeating for the NSA to implement something like a “security blocking sophon”[1] that permanently cripples the capacity of technology to become more trustworthy given how dependent are the societies in which these entities operate on trustworthiness being possible in some contexts ...
I can probably agree that none of apple’s actions have significantly affected the percentage of computing functionality used in society that is comprisable at low cost — however I do think that Apple can choose to act to (1) increase the average cost to compromise (2) expand the (incredibly small) set of functionality which is not trivial to compromse.
I don’t think that any truly expert 3-letter agencies can reasonably oppose those goals in a way that completely prevents them from advancing. I think it would be self-defeating for the NSA to implement something like a “security blocking sophon”[1] that permanently cripples the capacity of technology to become more trustworthy given how dependent are the societies in which these entities operate on trustworthiness being possible in some contexts ...
[1] (sophons are a concept from this novel — which I won’t spoil, great series!) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem