To the Editor:

“I Work for N.S.A. We Cannot Afford to Lose the Digital Revolution,” by Glenn S. Gerstell (The Privacy Project, nytimes.com, Sept. 10), crystallizes the Orwellian absurdity of our national security situation.

It’s not enough for the United States to spend more than half of our country’s discretionary budget each year on endless war . Now we’re told that we must spend trillions more, sacrifice our privacy and essentially nationalize Google. All in the name of national security.

It is a tragic waste of money. But more than that, it is a fool’s errand. It’s an arms race in which the whole world loses. Including us. We could decrease the defense budget by 50 percent, still spend more than Russia and China combined , and spend the rest waging peace, not war.

Let’s use our defense budget to help people struggling with the kind of economic deprivation that President George W. Bush called “the breeding grounds for extremists .”