Opinion | Can The Generations Born In 1960s, 1970s Still Lead? A Puzzle For Gen Z

Many of today’s leaders, strategic thinkers, analysts and institutions were educated, trained and professionally shaped during a world that was fundamentally different from the one we inhabit today. For those born in the 1960s and 1970s, the formative years of education, professional development and leadership were largely spent during the latter decades of the Cold War and the relatively stable period that followed it.

It was an era characterised by relatively predictable power structures, established international institutions, expanding globalisation and strategic assumptions that changed incrementally rather than overnight. The rules of the international system were reasonably well understood. Military power remained central, but economic

interdependence was generally seen as a force for prosperity, technology was an enabler rather than the principal driver of power, and information moved at a pace that allowed governments and institutions time to analyse, deliberate and respond.

That world is disappearing. The certainties of the past are steadily eroding. The twenty-first century is witnessing a transformation in the nature of power, conflict and competition that is unprecedented in both its speed and scale.

Technology is advancing at a pace that institutions struggle to absorb. Artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, cyber capabilities, space technologies, quantum technologies, biotechnology and data-driven decision-making are reshaping the strategic environment. Information travels across the globe in seconds. Often faster than old structures of governments can verify it, let alone respond to it. A political development in one corner of the world can create immediate strategic, economic or societal consequences thousands of kilometres away.

Economic interdependence, once regarded primarily as a source of prosperity and stability, is increasingly becoming an instrument of strategic competition and leverage. Supply chains can be disrupted and critical technologies can be denied. Financial systems can be used as instruments of pressure. Sanctions, export controls, data restrictions and access to critical minerals have become tools of statecraft.

The battlefield itself has also changed. The distinction between peace and war is becoming increasingly blurred. Competition now takes place continuously across military, economic, technological, diplomatic, informational, cyber and cognitive domains. A nation can be targeted without a single conventional shot being fired.

Perhaps most significantly, the human mind has emerged as a contested strategic space. Narratives can be manufactured and amplified at extraordinary speed. Social media can influence public opinion, polarise societies and shape political discourse. Artificial intelligence can generate persuasive content, manipulate information and accelerate the speed at which influence operations are conducted. The contest is no longer merely about controlling territory; it is increasingly about influencing perceptions, shaping choices and determining what people believe to be true.

This presents an uncomfortable question for today’s leadership. Are leaders who were educated and professionally shaped in the twentieth century adequately prepared to lead in a twenty-first-century strategic environment?

My answer to this question that is as old as the societies and tribes have existed on the earth is yes. A resounding yes. Even though the leaders of experience need to evolve and be able to understand the contextual environment and be at the speed of that of the youth in understanding and explaining with rationales. Not in action. The old adage of haste in action having consequences and not results as envisaged remains relevant in the digital age as well. Many youth, who, egged on by the electric environment of the CJP protests at Jantar Mantar in June this year, spewed language that even the Gen Z was ashamed of, realised the errors of their ways and then had to eat the proverbial humble pie by apologising on the same social media platform.

Because arrogance and energy and enthusiasm of youth that trumped the sagacity and sane advice of experience and balance of age has always resulted in chaos, rarely in positive results. If Duryodhana had listened to the advice of the seniors in the Kaurava camp, the humiliation and deaths and destruction that followed would have been avoided. But he chose to be egged on by Shakuni, aka inimical forces to his interests and that of Pandavas. The corollary to the contemporary world can be drawn.

This is not a question of age. Nor is it an argument that experience has become irrelevant. Quite the opposite. Experience, judgement, institutional memory and an understanding of history remain indispensable. Technology may change the character of competition, but human nature, ambition, fear, power and the pursuit of national interests remain remarkably constant. The real question is whether experience acquired in one era can be successfully applied to another without being accompanied by intellectual adaptation.

Every generation of leaders carries the imprint of the environment in which it was formed. Those born in the 1960s and 1970s grew up in an analogue world and subsequently witnessed the arrival of the digital age. They experienced the Cold War, its end, the unipolar moment, globalisation, the rise of terrorism, the information revolution and the emergence of a more contested international order. This journey provides an extraordinary breadth of experience.

But it can also create an unconscious attachment to old mental models. The danger is not that today’s leaders do not understand technology and the impact it has on the youth and the exploitation to shape the minds for prosecuting cognitive war. Many do. The danger is that institutions may continue to think about new technologies through old strategic frameworks.

Artificial intelligence cannot simply be treated as another technological upgrade. Cyber warfare cannot be understood merely as another military capability. Social media cannot be viewed only as a communication platform. Space cannot remain an exclusive preserve of traditional military thinking. Data is no longer simply information; it is becoming a strategic resource. And cognitive warfare challenges the very assumption that superiority in physical domains will necessarily translate into strategic success.

The speed of change compounds the problem. Strategic institutions traditionally function through hierarchy, deliberation, processes and layers of decision-making. These mechanisms provide discipline and accountability, but they can become liabilities when the external environment changes faster than the institution can respond. A government may take days to formulate a response to an event that social media has transformed into a global narrative within minutes. A military may spend years developing a capability that technology renders vulnerable within a few years. A corporation may build a supply chain for efficiency only to discover that geopolitical competition has made resilience more important than cost. An intelligence organisation may possess vast quantities of information but struggle to distinguish truth from synthetic reality.

The challenge, therefore, is not simply to acquire more technology. It is to change the way we think. The United States, Europe, China, Japan, India and other major powers are all confronting this challenge in different ways. They are attempting to reconcile institutions designed for a relatively predictable world with an environment defined by strategic competition, technological disruption, geopolitical fragmentation and unprecedented information flows.

No country has completely solved the problem. But few have moved fast to exploit to use the technology as weapon. The tech giants, the non-state actors, the countries who control the levers of power in the world and even those who do not but are revisionist, know how to exploit technology and the energy of the youth. The examples are around within Indian sub-continent. They do not care for consequences like Shakuni of Mahabharata. They seek revenge or control as there are faultlines, there are genuine concerns and problems and all these can be exploited. And that should make us pause.

Perhaps the central leadership challenge of our time is not choosing between the old generation and the new generation. It is learning how to combine the wisdom of experience with the imagination of youth.

The generations born in the 1960s and 1970s possess something that cannot be downloaded, programmed or generated by artificial intelligence. Decades of lived experience, institutional memory and exposure to strategic uncertainty. The younger generations possess something equally valuable and that is technological fluency, greater comfort with ambiguity and an intuitive understanding of a world in which digital and physical realities are inseparable.

The answer may therefore lie not in replacing one generation with another, but in creating inter-generational leadership. The experienced must be willing to unlearn and the young must be willing to learn from experience. Institutions must reward curiosity rather than merely seniority, adaptability rather than habit, and intellectual courage rather than conformity. Leadership in the coming decades will demand something more than knowledge. It will require the ability to continuously question one’s own assumptions.

The great strategic advantage of the generations born in the 1960s and 1970s may ultimately be their ability to bridge two worlds. The world they inherited and the world they are now being asked to lead. But there is a condition for them and that is they must be willing to change.

So, the question is not really that can the generations born in the 1960s and 1970s lead. They clearly can. The more important question is that can they lead a world that no longer operates by the rules in which they were taught to lead?

The answer will depend less on their age than on their capacity to adapt, learn, unlearn and imagine. Because in an age of accelerating change, the greatest threat to leadership may not be lack of experience but it may be experience that refuses to evolve.

The writer is an author and commentator on global strategic affairs and national security. A motivational speaker with extensive operational experience and leadership positions, he was the Commandant of the prestigious Army War College of India. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.