Nicholas Wright is a neuroscientist and strategist who bridges brain science and national security. For more than a decade, he has advised the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and other U.S. agencies, as well as counterparts in the United Kingdom, on how human decision-making shapes deterrence and defense. His research explores how the brain constructs perception amid uncertainty, how moral emotions fuel cooperation and conflict, and how leadership transforms fear into purposeful action. Wright also examines the ethics of information operations, democratic resilience, and what he calls the “identity–culture spiral” that enables large-scale cooperation. His recent work, Warhead: How the Brain Shapes War and War Shapes the Brain, probes how cognitive science illuminates great-power competition and the enduring risk of nuclear escalation.

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Wright about “neurostrategy”—the use of neuroscience to understand and influence nuclear and security decisions. Wright explains how perception is not reality but a brain-built model prone to deception; why 2014 marked a strategic inflection point with Russia and China; and how moral emotions and leadership determine a nation’s will to fight. He draws ethical boundaries for information operations in democracies and argues that internal cohesion matters more than foreign interference. His guiding principle: avoid losing in three ways—do not lose a conventional war (for instance, over Taiwan), do not decay from within, and do not fight a nuclear war. Across all three, Wright contends, strategic success begins with self-understanding.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was your inspiration for the work connecting neuroscience, security, and decision-making?

Nicholas Wright: Over ten years ago, I began applying new insights from neuroscience to decision-making about nuclear weapons—an enormously important area that had been neglected in public policy. When you consider atomic weapons, the goal is to influence how someone else will decide. If you are thinking about Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, you must consider how they make decisions about nuclear weapons, which involves understanding their thought processes and choices.

There are many sources of information, but the central fact is that they are human and thus have human brains. How do those brains work? For more than a decade, I have worked with the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and others to address that question.

They aim to understand how the human brain makes decisions. In turn, I gain perspective as a neuroscientist—insight into problems where the brain meets the real world in life-and-death situations. We’ve had a productive collaboration with military colleagues in the United States and the United Kingdom for many years.

Jacobsen: Another critical factor is the ten years of working across U.S. administrations: the first Trump administration, the Biden administration, and the current second Trump administration. Administrations matter because they provide direction—a vector—beyond the geopolitical and military context, alongside the science of how the brain can be used for good or ill. How have you oriented your advising and learning across different administrations? Many assume the key differences lie in political changes.

Wright: I have worked with the U.S. government since the second Obama term. However, the most significant drivers are external. I began this work at the tail end of the post-9/11 counterterrorism era and in 2014 on issues such as Israel–Palestine that dominated U.S. security thinking at the time. Then came Russia’s 2014 seizure and annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine—often discussed in terms of “gray-zone” or hybrid tactics—followed by the full-scale invasion launched in 2022.

In 2014, we saw a turning point. Russia sent its so-called “little green men” into Crimea, and at the same time, China was shifting. It is difficult to pinpoint precisely when the change began, but it became apparent after Xi Jinping took office in 2013. By 2017, it was clear that he was steering China in a different direction—more expansionist abroad and more authoritarian at home. With both China and Russia, something new was happening.

Many in the American government and, like me, in advisory roles recognized that these were profound shifts. They marked a sea change in the external environment we had to contend with. It was no longer primarily about terrorism. The United States had once been so overwhelmingly militarily superior that it did not need to worry about peer competitors. That is no longer the case. The most significant shift has been the resurgence of great-power competition. The issue is less about changes in U.S. administrations and more about changes in global realities that every administration must confront.

Jacobsen: With perception under uncertainty, there are factors like the “fog of war.” Given the shortcuts in our sensory systems, how does uncertainty interact with perception in a war context, especially when so much is unknown and there are multiple dimensions to interpret?

Wright: The first thing to understand about perception is that our brains cannot process all the information constantly entering them. Each eye alone has tens of millions of light receptors, and in the center of the retina are millions dedicated to color and fine detail. Add hearing, taste, the position of every joint in the body, and the signals from the skin, and you realize the nervous system is bombarded with data. We cannot deal with that flood directly.

Instead, the brain uses a model of the world. Take vision as an example. You are not passively receiving information on some “television screen” in your head. You are actively constructing perception. What you see is not raw input—it is your brain’s best model of reality, assembled from incomplete and uncertain information.

We know that perception is a model of the world—a simulation that takes place inside the brain. For example, if you fix your eyes on one point in the center of your visual field, the edges of your vision look full of color. But this cannot be raw input, because the periphery of your retina lacks the receptors for color vision. The brain is filling in the gaps, creating a simulation. That model is what you perceive.

In the context of the “fog of war,” this means the model can be fooled or tricked. It must also constantly manage uncertainty. The model is controlled in two ways. First, it is anchored to reality through sensory input—your eyes, ears, and so on. Second, it is anchored by expectations about the world. For example, you expect a face to have two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. These anchors keep the model from collapsing into random hallucinations.

Still, the model is always an approximation, always one take on reality, never a perfect representation. Uncertainty is built in. And beyond perception, other brain systems—such as motivation, reward, and moral emotions—shape how we trust, cooperate, and respond to conflict.

Jacobsen: That brings me to status and dominance cues, as well as material incentives. How do moral emotions play into those dynamics? For instance, if there is a dominance-based conflict with potential for escalation, but a moral emotion—say, the sense of unfairness—enters the equation, can it buffer against the drive for dominance? Can moral emotions reduce conflict or support the role of a third-party intermediary, such as peacekeeping forces, to de-escalate tensions?

Wright: That is a crucial point. Just as your perceptual model simulates the world, your brain also runs models for emotions. These models help regulate how we interpret fairness, unfairness, and cooperation. They can serve as buffers against escalation by introducing constraints that are not purely material or status-based. In other words, moral emotions can redirect or soften conflict dynamics in ways that spreadsheets of costs and incentives alone cannot capture.

Rapid emotional responses, such as fear or anger, enable us to function in uncertain environments and respond appropriately. Without fear, for example, we would get into serious trouble; we need it to cope with rapidly changing conditions. The same applies to social motivations, such as the visceral rejection of unfairness. That instinct wells up inside us when we or those we care about are treated unjustly.

At the same time, we have other systems for planning. We can create forward-looking models of the world, projecting into the future in ways similar to planning moves in a chess game. In reality, the brain holds many different models, and these models work together like an orchestra. Fear might be the percussion, beating insistently in the background. Models of other people’s intentions—whether to cooperate or compete—might be the violins. Each system contributes its part.

Together they produce the “symphony” of life. Sometimes one section dominates, while at other times another does, but overall, they must remain coordinated. At the highest level, this orchestra is conducted by the frontal pole—the region just behind the forehead. That area allows us to reflect on our own thinking: to assess certainty, to build a model of ourselves. It helps keep the orchestra in balance.

Jacobsen: What about senses of identity? Not necessarily religious, political, or ethnic identity in detail, but how do these feed into the brain’s mechanisms of in-group and out-group formation, the functions of bonding, and the tools of dehumanization in politics?

Wright: Humans can create groups far larger than those of any other primate. Chimpanzees, for instance, can manage groups of several hundred individuals. Humans, by contrast, can sustain groups numbering in the thousands, such as a tribe, or even in the billions, as with modern nations like China or India. The question is: how do humans form and maintain groups on such a remarkable scale?

This is a kind of social alchemy. In the Middle Ages, alchemists tried to turn base metals into gold. What humans do is something more powerful: we create coherent groups—groups stable enough to work together toward shared goals, providing security and cooperation on scales no other primate can match.

How do we achieve this? Through what I would call an identity–culture spiral. Individuals form identities—answering the question “Who am I?”—and those identities are reinforced and made consistent through culture. At the same time, individuals shape culture. Together, this spiral enables the emergence of large, coherent groups.

When discussing identity in the brain, there are several layers. First, there is the embodied self—the sense of being a human body, looking out from behind your eyes. Second, there is the narrative self—the story we construct about where we came from and where we are going. This narrative can be profoundly reshaped.

After World War II, for example, many Germans who had been active Nazis had to rewrite their identities using earlier parts of their lives to reconstruct themselves as citizens of a new West Germany, now conservative members of a democratic society.

A third layer is the social self, which involves belonging to a particular group. That might be a military unit, a social club, or a sports team. This identity tells you who you are by teaching you the rules of your group. Yankees fans, for example, wear certain clothes, use certain expressions, and care about particular things. At the same time, it defines the out-groups—those you expect to learn less from and often to compete against.

The embodied self, the narrative self, and the social self all work together to help us answer the central question: Who am I? That, in turn, is what enables humans to perform this remarkable social alchemy—creating coherent groups on a vast scale. Through the creation of shared identities and cultures, we form coherent groups. Those groups enable us to be the thinking, cooperative animals that we are.

Jacobsen: These dynamics seem less relevant to those in the Navy or Air Force, and more critical for soldiers on the ground. You’ve written about the experiences of American and Chinese soldiers, particularly how leadership and morale factor into this. I’m not speaking of propaganda or rallying cries, but of how proper leadership can inspire individuals to override the amygdala’s primary fear response and instead make secondary or tertiary responses in the midst of combat, or even in anticipation of battle.

Wright: That can be reframed as the question: why do humans stand and fight instead of running away? In many situations, the more natural response would be flight. So why stand and fight? In my book, I look at examples such as the Chinese troops in World War II. During the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, large numbers of Chinese soldiers stood their ground against the Japanese invasion.

Part of this comes down to overcoming fear responses—not eliminating them, but controlling and harnessing them. Fear is valid if appropriately trained. Good training can transform fear, which might otherwise lead to panic and retreat, into a channeled response that enables soldiers to fight effectively.

Leadership is always central. Humans inevitably generate leaders because we are animals that form large groups through what I described as the identity–culture spiral, or social alchemy. Within these groups, leadership emerges, and people follow. This is built into how our brains operate.

Consider Admiral Horatio Nelson, the greatest naval commander of the age of sail. Contemporary accounts said he “infused his spirit” into his men. This meant he could create a model of the world and communicate it to others, enabling them to achieve things they could not have accomplished on their own. Leaders assume responsibility for others, communicate a clear vision, and provide their followers with a sense of purpose.

People follow leaders for two key reasons: dominance and prestige. Some follow those who are stronger. Others follow because of prestige—the recognition that a leader has knowledge or skills worth learning from. Humans are not especially strong compared to chimpanzees, but our survival depends on learning from others. That means prestige-based leadership is crucial.

So, there will always be leaders and followers. With practical training and capable leadership, those leaders can inspire people to stand and fight even in the face of overwhelming fear.

Jacobsen: Freedom House has noted that democratic and autocratic tendencies exist on a spectrum, shifting over decades. They do not simply label countries as “democratic” or “autocratic,” but instead chart where societies fall along that spectrum. Over the past decade, their data shows a decline in democratic tendencies worldwide. This raises a concern: neurostrategy could be used by actors with constrictive aims, limiting human possibilities, or by those with expansive aims, enhancing them. In terms of balancing neuroscience, security policy, and ethics, what are the red lines? How do we prevent manipulation of citizens while still enhancing human security?

Wright: You’re right that over the last fifteen years, many indicators show a reduction in democracy across several countries. But if you take the longer view, democracy has always advanced in waves. In the early nineteenth century, democracies emerged, then receded. After World War I, there was a rise in democratic states, followed by a collapse during the rise of Nazi Germany and other authoritarian regimes. In the 1980s, a surge in democracies occurred. We are currently living through what some call a “democratic recession.”

So, yes, I agree that over the past fifteen years we’ve seen a reduction in democracy in many parts of the world. The question, as you’ve framed it, is about red lines—how to use knowledge responsibly, particularly from neuroscience and security policy, without violating human rights.

I’m cautiously optimistic. While we are in a democratic recession, history shows that societies can reverse such trends when they make good choices. We’ve done it before. If we prioritize freedom and democratic values, we can expand them again. The red lines, then, involve ensuring that any use of neuroscience or security policy strengthens human security and freedom, rather than constraining or manipulating citizens.

Jacobsen: So let’s return to red lines. I mean specifically: with a broader neuro-based strategy, how should we set boundaries to ensure that knowledge is used to enhance human security rather than to manipulate citizens?

Wright: Take information operations, for example. These efforts involve influencing how people make decisions. In democratic societies—such as Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom—we must be cautious. These governments already have powerful bureaucracies capable of influencing others, but the key red line is to keep those capabilities focused externally rather than internally. In other words, we should avoid turning those tools inward against our own citizens.

Another point: while China and Russia invest heavily in information operations designed to influence our societies, the bigger danger comes from within. If our democracies are going to weaken, it will not primarily be because of what they do—it will be because of the internal problems we create ourselves. The way we manage our own societies matters far more than foreign influence campaigns.

Jacobsen: Let’s close with something forward-looking. Suppose a minister or general reads Warhead and becomes interested. What policy changes should they make first? And once those policies are in place, how should success be measured reliably and validly over time?

Wright: That’s a great question. For policymakers today, success is about building societies that can thrive over the long haul. We are in an extended era of strategic competition, and winning that era is not about short-term battles. It’s about decades of resilience. To do that, we need to avoid losing in three critical ways…

There’s no simple answer about which of these three we must prioritize—we must avoid losing in all of them. First, we must avoid losing a conventional war, such as one over Taiwan. That is now a real possibility; the West could lose such a conflict. To prevent that, we need to harness our understanding of how the brain works. So we can, for instance, seize the initiative of surprise, cultivate superior will to fight, and manipulate adversaries’ perceptions better than they manipulate ours.

Second, we must avoid losing domestically. Our societies could decay from within. To counter this, we need to ensure our societies remain healthy. This means preventing information operations from being directed inward, against our own citizens, and recognizing that the flourishing of our societies is ultimately more important than anything attempted by external actors, such as China or Russia.

Third, we must avoid losing in a nuclear war. It does not matter how many casualties the other side suffers; if tens of millions of Americans, British, or Canadians die in a nuclear exchange, then we have lost. We need nuclear weapons to deter others–and the goal must be to prevent atomic war.

I am optimistic that greater self-knowledge—understanding ourselves as humans with brains that work in predictable ways—can help us navigate all three of these existential risks. If we do that, I am confident we can endure and thrive in this new era of competition.

Jacobsen: Nick, thank you very much for your time today. I appreciate it.

Wright: Brilliant, excellent. Thank you so much.