That's not the NSA's problem, though. By all means criticise the US as a whole for that. I'm less in agreement with your second point - you can easily apply it

That's not the NSA's problem, though. By all means criticise the US as a whole for that. I'm less in agreement with your second point - you can easily apply it to any slightly frivolous spending. If petrol usage efficiency in the US went up by 10% for example (should be easily achievable for not much cost), in principle the money saved overall would be over $10 billion in 2014. That'd save a lot of lives, too.