This is a very narrow framing, and that is what I am trying to get at. Obviously it would be absurd to deliberately provide welfare to criminal enterprises. But our adversaries get a vote in what happens. There is a level of risk at which you are forced to pay the ransom.

If we don't get trapped in this false binary we might consider other options. I think the takeaway from my comment should be, if you want to make it illegal to pay a ransom to these groups, then you will also need to dismantle their infrastructure and organization. Otherwise you're just putting the ball in their court and hoping they'll fumble it. It's not that we're "scared," it's that that isn't a strategy.