OP claims it's "obvious" that the staircases are designed for defense, contradicting the article while giving no evidence. This despite the fact that the whole point of the article was that there does not appear to be evidence to support this claim.
Yeah the author seems to be approaching their overall argument by first establishing that there's no primary source evidence from the time of castle building that the defense theory is true. He seems to be trying to establish that the argument for it is modern and therefore just as good or bad as any other.
I wish he would delve into things more but it seems reasonable to me to first establish where the defense theory first came from.
That theory doesn't have any ground, but I am more interested what makes people believe that there is such theory. Nobody today claims, that everything that is written in a Bible is true, why would there such belief without any doubt to something that someone claimed just 100 years ago?