I agree with you, but your adversary may not think in a sufficiently developed way.

Which is why we had such destructive wars in the past..

Maybe we should leverage all of this supposedly world-changing AI to move on from primitive wars instead of using it to build more weapons. At a certain point, our species will be faced with a choice between maintaining the status quo (climate destruction, mass casualties through violent conflicts, food/water shortages, extinction-level events, etc) or working together to forge a sustainable path forward for the benefit of the species. An argument that this current world order is just how things are and there's nothing to be done but escalate is just a vote for the former.