Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah well back then we had actual opponents. North Korea are crackpots, and some fundamentalists prefer living with goats in caves to comfortable air travel, but never in a million years will those cranks be the threat that the Axis or even the Soviets were.
Do you believe that China isn't a worthy enough competitor in electronic espionage? Or the occasionally conflicting interests with Russia and other countries? The main job of NSA isn't to support short-term military operations in whatever location they're fighting today, they have to ensure that if they suddenly need to focus on country X, then they already have years/decades worth of collected intelligence.
And of course, what you say about "country X" also applies to "individual Y," doesn't it? How convenient.