During a hot war, it’s reasonable to be more concerned about enemy surveillance than domestic surveillance. In either case, you lose some privacy. But enemy surveillance can cause you to lose the war, or at least for more people to die before winning.

We aren’t at war with China, but the possibility is taken seriously by the US foreign policy establishment, which knows more about the situation that you or I do. The most reliable way to avoid war is to be impossible to beat. So preempting the ability of potential enemies to collect data about our citizens reduces the chance of war.