The State Department on Wednesday announced that a foreign tech group provides online infrastructure to U.S. domestic terror groups to conduct violence across the country. The department formally recognized Italy-based Autistici/Inventati as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group and subsequently sanctioned it.
According to the State Department, Autistici/Inventati, or the A/I Collective, is a “hacker cell that provides far-left extremists with encrypted communications, calls, and web-hosting services — all concealed from law enforcement. The A/I Collective is a central node in the far-left’s war on our civilization.”
“These tools are specifically designed to support the operations of far-left terrorist networks, built to enable them to organize, recruit, communicate, disseminate propaganda, share target information and tactics, and carry out violent attacks — all while remaining anonymous, untraceable, and beyond the reach of the law,” the State Department said. It operates in the U.S. and around the world.
The A/I Collective supported terror groups like Jane’s Revenge, which is responsible for firebombing pregnancy centers across the country after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, according to the State Department. Jane’s Revenge “relied on A/I Collective tools and services to publish official communiqués and claims of responsibility for violent and criminal acts and to incite copycat attacks.”
The Rose City Antifa cell in Portland, Oregon, used A/I Collective’s tools to organize and incite more violence, including “an attack on Customs and Border Patrol helicopters,” spreading doxxing lists on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, and call for assaults on ICE agents “in their homes,” the department said.
“There will be no refuge for violent extremists who wage war on our civilization and plot to undermine law and order, destroy critical infrastructure, assault political opponents, or conspire to conceal their crimes from authorities,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
The terror designation means that no American or U.S.-based financial can do business with the A/I Collective and that its assets in the U.S. are frozen. “Violations of U.S. sanctions may result in the imposition of civil or criminal penalties on U.S. and foreign persons,” the Treasury Department stated.
The State Department says the A/I Collective hosts about 16,000 mailboxes, 1,500 websites, 5,500 mailing lists, and 10,000 blogs.
Its blog platform, NoBlogs, includes topics such as “Anarchist Anti-Militarism, Indigenous Rights, and Global Liberation Struggles,” “Radical anti-militarist sabotage and prison abolitionism,” “Gentrification, Touristification, and Urban Displacement,” and “Critique of State Power, Carceral Systems, and Legal Repression.”
The A/I Collective website is open about its desire for unrest and the destruction of Western civilization. Its “manifesto” states “standing outside the commercial attitude of payed services and web spaces, we happily welcome those unresting towards cultural and media censorship, against the globalized imaginery being prepared, packed and sold to us each and every day.”
“We support individuals, collectives, communities and groups whose political and social activities fit within this worldview and who share with us some fundamental principles: anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-militarism,” the “about” page continues. “On top of that, one has to share our basic attitude towards money and the capitalistic world: a deep feeling of uneasyness and unrest.”
The group’s “policy” page states that “to be hosted on our servers you have to share our principles of anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia, and anti-militarism.”
It further notes that “misuse” of its platform includes “promoting fascism, nazism, militarism, state nationalism or contributing to the discrimination, harassment or harm against any individual or group through forms of discrimination based on gender, race, religion or sexual orientation, along with issuing statements which are racist, xenophobic or discriminatory in any other form.”
Interestingly, it also has a “policy” against “publishing of others’ personal information,” but caveats that it is allowed so long as there is a “legitimate right of reporting such information.” Doxxing federal agents trying to do their job appears to fit into that caveat.
“The services we provide are not intended for (directly or indirectly) commercial use, or to be used by organized religions or political parties, or, in short, by those who already have the means and resources sufficient to widely spread their own ideas, or who use the concept of representation and (explicit or implicit) delegation in their day-to-day relationships and projects,” the manifesto continues.
They operate as a nonprofit and primarily through volunteers with “no sponsors or funding of any kind” except for the donations of true believers. It is unclear who their donors are.
“Political terrorism has no place in our society, and we will continue to cut the financial lifelines of these groups until they are eliminated,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.
