Wired for War: The Psychology of Leaders Who Choose Conflict

War, Power, and the Psychology of Leaders: Dark Traits, Moral Disengagement, and AI-Driven Distance

Dr. Leslie Poston argues that war is a predictable failure of leadership selection: the traits that help people gain power, Dark Triad and Tetrad traits like narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism, are the same traits that make leaders dangerous when it comes to decisions about conflict. She traces this pattern through current wars including the US-Iran strikes, Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Afghanistan-Pakistan. The episode explores how Bandura's moral disengagement operates in modern warfare, how technologies like autonomous weapons and AI targeting systems are widening the accountability gap between leaders and consequences, and why violence is cognitively simpler than peace. She draws a structural parallel between military and corporate leadership failures, particularly in the AI industry's treatment of creative workers, and closes with research-backed interventions for changing who ends up in positions of power and what they bring with them.

00:00 Why Leaders Start Wars

03:10 Dark Tetrad in Power

06:05 Ego Escalation Pattern

07:25 Moral Disengagement Explained

09:03 AI Weapons and Distance

13:38 Violence Beats Complexity

14:56 Groupthink and Sunk Costs

17:20 Corporate Violence via AI

20:53 What Real Leadership Is

22:29 Fixing the Selection Problem