Nicholas Wright uses insights from neuroscience, behaviour and technology to understand competition and conflict. He is an affiliated scholar at Georgetown University, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London (UCL), Consultant at Intelligent Biology, and Adjunct Fellow (Non-Resident) at Washington D.C.’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. His new book, Warhead: How the brain shapes war and war shaped your brain, will be published in 2025 by Pan Macmillan (UK) and St. Martin’s Press (US).

He has advised the Pentagon Joint Staff for over a decade. On artificial intelligence (AI) he advises Europe’s largest tech company, SAP. DARPA used his definition of gray zone conflict for their recent AI programme on the gray zone. Foreign Affairs chose his piece on AI for its Top 10 of 2018 on the net. He edited the book Artificial Intelligence, China, Russia and Global Order (Air University Press, 2019), and co-edited Human, Machine, War: How the Mind-Tech Nexus will Win Future Wars (Air University Press, 2025). He has collaborated with Peking University. He has led Track 1.5 dialogues e.g., with the White House, UK Cabinet Office and Australian Prime Minister’s office, as well as with the Australian and Canadian Government Chief Scientists.

He previously worked in nuclear policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC; used functional brain imaging at UCL and the London School of Economics; and was a neurology doctor in Oxford and London. The Economist and The New York Times covered his academic research. He has published in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, and appeared on the BBC and CNN.

He has a medical degree from UCL, a BSc in Health Policy from Imperial College London, Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (UK), and an MSc in Neuroscience and a PhD in Neuroscience both from UCL.