I never claimed that this particular thing wasteful. I was only pointing out that "And anyway it's being paid for by private donors, not the US government." isn't a good counter argument.

I wasn't taking any sides on this issue, so its not really relevant how much energy it took. I said "if" it is and it was a hypothetical to give a concrete example, not a statement that I thought it was wasteful.

I'll paraphrase:

If <something> is hypothetically wasteful, then <something> is still wasteful regardless of who did it.