I agree with your general concern, but I'm not sure I accept this part.
At the moment, a lot of smart, tech-savvy people channel a lot of energy into fighting this sort of thing directly. They look for weaknesses in the systems, analyze potential abuses, go to town hall meetings and Senate hearings. If that's ultimately a doomed delaying tactic, it doesn't mean the entire problem is unsolvable - but it also doesn't mean the people who think it's hopeless have a better answer on hand.
I think there's room to say "fighting this directly isn't going to work, so let's use the time we're buying to look for a better answer". It could perhaps be said with more positivity or focus on the 'elsewhere', but the lack of a proposal doesn't mean the criticism is invalid.
(Of course, we should also directly ask if the pessimism is warranted. The crypto wars never ended, but for all the fatalism over that issue we're in a far better position today than "RSA is a munition, install this Clipper chip". I worry that the common axis is not "activism wins" but "containment fails", which argues crypto and surveillance will both spread. But I think it's an open question.)