arms races

Noun

arms race (plural arms races)

1. A competition for military supremacy between two powers, especially for the most weapons and the best military technology.
   • Mr. Xi has made his intentions clear. He aims to achieve a “national rejuvenation” that would include displacing the United States as the dominant rule-setter in the region, controlling access to the South China Sea, and bringing Taiwan — a self-governing island that China sees as lost territory —...2023 March 25, Damien Cave, “An Anxious Asia Arms for a War It Hopes to Prevent”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 25 Mar 2023
2. (figuratively) Any similar competition that involves competing developments.
   • The cost of parasitism has provoked an evolutionary arms race between parasite and host, in which hosts evolve defences to avoid becoming victimized and parasites counterattack by evolving strategies to outwit their hosts.2006, R.M. Kilner, “The evolution of egg colour and patterning in birds”, in Biological Reviews, volume 81, page 389, column 1