The project's funded by the US government, that's true, but that doesn't allow them to magically spy on you. It's still an open-source project and anyone can audit the code. And, in any case, using it doesn't hurt your privacy in any way compared to using Firefox / Chromium. At worst, it can give you a false sense of security. They sure are going through a lot of effort just to give people a false sense of security.

It's comparable to the mission to bury radio receivers in the ground near the border with North Korea: they want to destabilize Asian nations by empowering the citizens with free information. That's the only spook element there is; that's why the government funds it. Meanwhile, we get to benefit from the privacy that it gives us. Tor anonymity isn't water-tight, but it does, by and large, protect you from mass data gathering.