Dr. Nicholas Wright
speaker
239 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2025
last heard 6 Feb
Dr. Nicholas Wright’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So how can it do that?
The United States can do that by affecting how those people choose to make decisions.
And that necessarily involves their psychology.
It necessarily involves their brains.
So, for example, if you're thinking about the leaders of states like Iran or Venezuela,
The unpredictability of Donald Trump is actually quite effective.
So we know that one of the basic principles of our brain works is that our brain really cares about things that are surprising, things that are unpredictable.
They often have by far the biggest impact on us and how we understand the world and make our decisions.
So when President Trump, for example, is unpredictable, that helps him influence the leaders of countries like Venezuela or Iran.
And in addition to that, we also need to think about
How can any regime run any country?
How can one person lead 10 people or one person lead 1,000 people or a million people or 10 million people?
And that comes down to the ability of those people to sit at the top of social hierarchies.
within their countries.
Now, again, that's about their brains.
Now, if the United States is going to be able to influence these countries effectively and not spend huge amounts of money doing it, then, for example, it may well be that what it ends up doing is installing leaders or encouraging regimes that may not be democratic, but
just as in the Cold War in Guatemala or, for example, in Chile, are more amenable to US interests.
Now, that may not be something that we want to do morally.
And in addition to that, that may be something that is an effective way of achieving US goals, at least in the near term.
Yeah.
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