In 2022, a Russian ambassador got into a fight on Twitter and lost. Not to a government. To a cartoon dog.
His name was Mikhail Ulyanov, a career diplomat trained to spar with American secretaries of state. One afternoon his replies filled with hundreds of accounts wearing the same Shiba Inu avatar, mocking him in perfect coordination. Flustered, he typed a line that would follow him for months: “You pronounced this nonsense, not me.” Within days it was a T-shirt. He’d been beaten off the platform by an army with no leader, no budget, no office, and no name older than a few weeks.
That army was called NAFO. And how it worked is the reason I wrote my book.
Nobody was paid. In fact, you paid to join. You donated to Ukraine’s forces, and in return an artist drew you your own cartoon dog. The donation was the enlistment fee. The avatar was the uniform.
Then you went to work — unpaid, tireless, in a dozen languages, around the clock — producing better propaganda than Russia’s state media machine with its hundreds of millions in budget. Because the machine wasn’t paying you in money. It was paying you in the only currency that never loses value: belonging, status, and the pure joy of a fight you were allowed to win.
Here’s the part that should stop you. Set aside Ukraine, set aside Russia. That same structure — a task, a uniform, a wage paid in status — is running right now inside movements you cheer and movements you fear. The cause changes. The machine is identical. And most of the time, the workforce has no idea it’s on a payroll.
I spent twenty years building this machinery for campaigns, ministries, and brands. THE ENLISTMENT ENGINE is where I finally take it apart — how modern propaganda stopped asking you to believe and started asking you to help, and how to recognize the moment you’re being recruited.
It’s out now.
