This work investigates adversarial training in the context of margin-based
linear classifiers in the high-dimensional regime where the dimension $d$ and
the number of data points $n$ diverge with a fixed ratio $\alpha = n / d$. We
introduce a tractable mathematical model where the interplay between the data
and adversarial attacker geometries can be studied, while capturing the core
phenomenology observed in the adversarial robustness literature. Our main
theoretical contribution is an exact asymptotic description of the sufficient
statistics for the adversarial empirical risk minimiser, under generic convex
and non-increasing losses for a Block Feature Model. Our result allow us to
precisely characterise which directions in the data are associated with a
higher generalisation/robustness trade-off, as defined by a robustness and a
usefulness metric. We show that the the presence of multiple different feature
types is crucial to the high sample complexity performances of adversarial
training. In particular, we unveil the existence of directions which can be
defended without penalising accuracy. Finally, we show the advantage of
defending non-robust features during training, identifying a uniform protection
as an inherently effective defence mechanism.