Arms race

An arms race is when two group must spend resources equivalent to that of the other in order to keep up. The classical example is with militaries. If you make you're military bigger, I have to make mine bigger so that I don't get conquered. And now you're feeling threatened so you make yours even bigger and on and on we get until the soviet union collapsed or WW1 starts.

As David Graeber argues in Bullshit Jobs, arms races can apply more generally to a vast array or parts of society, and in end up in tremendous amounts of wasted energy and potential. Examples include: advertising, corporate lawyers and lobbying. That's not to say none of these jobs have a core of utility, but simply that they scale in proportion to how much competitors are spending on them.