There is no such argument among people who actually know how this stuff works. Cheap drones might work pretty well for trench warfare in Ukraine but it's impossible to build a cheap drone that would be effective in a conflict with China over Taiwan. The distances alone mean that aircraft must be large just to get there, and thus not cheap regardless of whether there's a crew onboard.

Autonomous flight control software is still only able to handle the simplest missions. Maybe that will change in a few years but for now anything complex requires a remote pilot, and those communication links are very vulnerable.