the.com/evolutionary arms race

means A cycle where two competing species (like predator and prey, or parasite and host) keep evolving new adaptations to counter each other, with neither gaining lasting advantage.

from Coined by biologists borrowing straight from Cold War vocabulary — the literal military arms race between nations stockpiling bigger weapons to offset the other side's bigger weapons. The term caught on in evolutionary biology mid-20th century, popularized through work on predator-prey and host-parasite dynamics (Leigh Van Valen's 1973 'Red Queen' hypothesis, named after the Lewis Carroll character who must run constantly just to stay in place, gave the idea its most famous image). No single inventor gets sole credit — it's a case of a vivid political metaphor migrating naturally into science because the parallel was too obvious to resist.