Renaud de Kerchove 🇧🇪🤝🇺🇦

NAFO: The Decentralized Army the World Doesn’t Fully Appreciate ✊ I’ve been part of NAFO for few years, and I genuinely believe it’s one of the most extraordinary things to emerge from the internet age. Not just because of what it has done for Ukraine, but because of what it represents for the future of humanity. Think about this for a moment. People from all over the world, different nationalities, languages, professions, political backgrounds, and walks of life, united by a common purpose. No conventional headquarters. No central command telling everyone what to do. No mandatory membership fees. No salaries for the ordinary Fellas and Fellarinas spending their time fighting Russian propaganda. And yet, somehow, it works. People organize themselves. They expose disinformation, ridicule propaganda, support Ukraine, raise money, and help deliver real equipment to people fighting for their country’s survival. Nobody has to order them around. They simply give a damn. How many people belong to NAFO? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? I don’t know. And that’s partly the beauty of it. You cannot easily count a movement that doesn’t require people to formally join in the first place. Now think about the other side. Russia has spent years developing an enormous propaganda and information warfare apparatus, supported by state resources, intelligence operations, media networks, covert influence campaigns, and increasingly sophisticated technology. Its operations have reached deep into democratic societies, exploiting political divisions and public distrust. And what has the democratic world done in response? Yes, Europe has institutions, initiatives, researchers, and programs dedicated to countering foreign information manipulation. But are we seriously matching the scale of the threat? Imagine the European Union treating information warfare with the same seriousness it treats conventional military threats. Imagine investing billions into independent research, advanced AI detection systems, public education, investigative journalism, and the infrastructure needed to expose coordinated foreign manipulation. And now imagine that institutional capability existing alongside a global, organic, decentralized movement like NAFO. Not controlling NAFO. Not buying it. Not turning Fellas into government employees or political operatives. Helping build the tools, knowledge, and open infrastructure that independent people can use however they choose. That’s the extraordinary possibility I see. A powerful, properly funded democratic defense system working in the same information environment as an independent, decentralized global community. One provides institutional resources. The other provides something that money cannot manufacture: authentic human participation. And perhaps the most important lesson of NAFO has nothing to do with Russia or Ukraine alone. Perhaps NAFO is showing us something much bigger about how human beings can organize, cooperate, and exercise collective power without surrendering their independence to centralized authority. We spend billions developing technologies that promise decentralization. Meanwhile, a bunch of Fellas on the internet have been demonstrating what organic human decentralization can look like. And I think the world has barely begun to understand the significance of that. We are NAFO, and this is the way✊