But could you imagine if we could spend all those trillions on something good (enabled by the other guys doing the same). I know, impossible. But still, imagine.
Wolves would eat every deer if they could. They don't not because they think it's a bad idea, but because either they can't because the deer are good at not being eaten, or when they get too close to that goal, they run out of deer and starve into a smaller population that lets the deer recover.
Any creature that "wins" the "arms race" against its prey either finds new prey or goes extinct. And species that loses the arms race better hope their predators have no other prey and starve to extinction before they all get eaten, or go extinct themselves.
The only reason there's a predator-prey balance at all is a kind of survivor bias: anything not in balance is already filtered out.
Not all balanced relationships are predator-prey. Viruses aren't really predators as such, but they still evolve to a balance against immune systems. If they get too good, they burn out their host populations and go extinct (SARS, say, though there have surely been countless natural examples over history). If they don't adapt in time to better immune systems, again, curtains. You could say smallpox as an example, though the last step in the arms race was an Outside Context Problem[1] from the virus's perspective.
Similarly, any overly-large step in weaponry can be just as deadly as not enough: working Star Wars missile defense could easily have resulted in the end of the world, as would not keeping up with the Soviets. That shaky balance is partly deliberate, and, if you're into the anthropic principle, partly also survivorship bias.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession#Outside_Context_Pr...
I cannot imagine because you haven’t said anything different than history and the current state of the world. Trillions are being spent on what a people think is good for them. But you don’t think it’s good what the trillions are being spent on. And so it goes.
Though, before we do it, let's take a moment to consider most people do not look good at all in leather trenchcoats.
It would be fabulous if we could be more like chimps than we have been recently, but of course we have the potential to be much better than chimps. Actually most humans are much better than chimps. It is we Americans (and Russians, and Ethiopians, and whoever else is currently fighting wars voluntarily) who should be better.
It is also probably the case that our brainpower didn't invent warfare, and that this phenomenon isn't unique to us: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War