The term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for real or apparent military supremacy. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation. Nowadays the term is commonly used to describe any competition where there is no absolute goal, only the relative goal of staying ahead of the other competitors.
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The period known as the Cold War was an arms race between the former U.S.S.R. and the United States of America with both trying to gain more nuclear weaponry than the other. another example :included the the arms race beetween germany and britan since 1897 to 1906 for their supremacy of their naval power.
More generically, the term "arms race" is used to describe any competition where there is no absolute goal, only the relative goal of staying ahead of the other competitors in rank or knowledge. An arms race may also imply futility as the competitors spend a great deal of time and money, yet end up in the same situation as if they had never started the arms race.
An evolutionary arms race is a system where two populations are evolving in order to continuously one-up members of the other population.
This is related to the Red Queen effect, where two populations are co-evolving to overcome each other but are failing to make absolute progress.
In technology, there are close analogues to the arms races between parasites and hosts, such as the arms race between computer virus writers and antivirus software writers, or spammers against Internet service providers and E-mail software writers, or between large companies, a possible example being Apple Inc. and Microsoft.
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