Warhead: How the Brain Shapes War and War Shapes The Brain
Pan Macmillan (UK), St. Martin’s Press (US), 2025
From the latest book by Dr Nicholas Wright, a leading neuroscientist and advisor to the Pentagon, discover a new perspective on the human brain and on war.
Warhead journeys through the brain to show us how it shapes human behaviour in conflict and war. Cutting-edge research comes to life through battle stories from history: What was it like for American or Chinese foot soldiers in World War Two? Courage, leadership, deception, cooperation… The brains with which we live our everyday lives are built for conflict: in the office or on the battlefield.
In an increasingly dangerous world that threatens our values and success, we must harness this knowledge to protect our way of life.
Human, Machine, War: How the Mind-Tech Nexus Will Win Future Wars
Air University Press, 2025 Edited by Nicholas Wright, Michael Miklaucic, Todd Veazie
Military and strategic success depends not on minds or technology but on the combination of minds plus technology. We call this combination the Mind-Tech Nexus, which we define as how human factors (e.g., will to fight, skill, daring, perception) will interface and converge with the technologies of our time (e.g., digital, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, neuroscience) to help shape the character and the outcomes of competition. This volume brings together world-leading scholars and practitioners to explore how minds and technology are being—and can be—harnessed for military and geostrategic power.
Forewords by General James E. Rainey (Commander, US Army Futures Command) and Sir Lawrence Freedman (Emeritus Professor of War Studies, King's College London).
Artificial Intelligence, China, Russia, and the Global Order
Air University Press, 2019 Edited by Nicholas Wright
Given the wide-ranging implications for global competition, domestic political systems and daily life, US policymakers must prepare for the impacts of new artificial intelligence (AI)-related technologies. Anticipating AI’s impacts on the global order requires US policy makers’ awareness of certain key aspects of the AI-related technologies—and how those technologies will interact with the rapidly changing global system of human societies. One area that has received little in-depth examination to date is how AI-related technologies could affect countries’ domestic political systems—whether authoritarian, liberal democratic, or a hybrid of the two—and how they might impact global competition between different regimes. This work highlights several key areas where AI-related technologies have clear implications for globally integrated strategic planning and requirements.