Leftists used a foreign technology group’s tools to encourage crimes in the United States across multiple presidencies with near impunity. Now, they have one month to stop or face legal consequences.
The State and Treasury Departments sanctioned the Italy-based Autistici Inventati Collective as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” on Wednesday for providing digital services such as NoBlogs, a blogging platform that hosts numerous radical leftist sites. NoBlogs users follow a long-standing anarchist tradition of posting anonymous articles — sometimes called communiques or report-backs — that openly take credit for violent attacks or call for further illegal behavior. The A/I Collective publicly offers NoBlogs, encrypted communication, and other tools only to “anti-fascism” activists to keep their data off-grid from traditional corporate platforms and inaccessible to law enforcement, the State Department noted.
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Activists were using NoBlogs for communiques and other controversial purposes since at least Donald Trump’s first presidency, a Washington Examiner review found. The wealth of public content sparked some investigations into those posting it, but prior administrations did not take action against the overall digital network. Left-wing voices are now expressing alarm as Trump is requiring the A/I Collective’s clients to stop using its services by Sept. 25 to avoid civil or criminal penalties.
The A/I Collective — named after the founders’ idea of “autism with invention” — told the Washington Examiner that “we don’t know for sure” how the sanctions will affect its work.
“It actually depends how it unfolds,” the group said via email. “We are worried and this is an unsettling trend since it is a direct attack towards those who provide platforms and communication networks that we think are perfectly legit.”
“Words completely fail me when addressing the potential loss to the anarchist movement of — as the US names it — 5,500 mailing lists, and 10,000 blogs,” said a self-described anarchist account on X on Wednesday. “This must be fought aggressively and immediately.”
Platforming violence
Critics of Trump were quick to claim the government is punishing the A/I Collective for political speech or ideas. But the group served more extreme purposes in the U.S. as early as 2017, when the NoBlogs site “Philly Anti-Capitalist” bragged about sabotaging ATM machines to attack “commerce-sh**-capitalism.”
“We took non-corrugated cardboard cut down to the width and half the length of an ATM card with super-glue applied to one side, and jammed them into the card slot of the machine or the card slot for the entry to the vestibule,” the December 2017 communique said. “It was surprisingly easy to do and more than 50 targets got got!”
“This time of year has prime weather for looking unassuming and concealing your identity while carrying out all kinds of illegal activities, so don’t be afraid to try this at home!” the blog said. “We felt super chill and productive!”
The A/I Collective’s website advises against fully relying on its services to “do something nasty without being caught,” yet it boasts that the group has spent decades keeping data out of government agencies’ hands during investigations.
Philly Anti-Capitalist did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment. “Do not share unnecessary details about sensitive actions (ones that, beyond confirming that the action happened, would assist an investigation into it), no matter how insignificant they might seem,” the website says about submitting communiques.
Under former President Joe Biden, NoBlogs users’ brazen content helped drive law enforcement investigations into the abortion-rights group Jane’s Revenge in 2022 and a California terrorist in 2024.
Jane’s Revenge, hosted by NoBlogs, posted about its arson and vandalism against anti-abortion pregnancy centers across the country in 2022 after a preemptive leak of the Supreme Court’s opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.
“We smashed out their windows, and vandalized their building with slogans and imagery ranging from coat hangers to ‘vote blue lol,'” Jane’s Revenge wrote in June 2022 about targeting a center in Lynchburg, Virginia. “The ground in front of their now smashed front door reads ‘if abortion ain’t safe you ain’t safe.’ We encourage anyone to gather their friends, pick up a crowbar or a bottle of spray paint, find your nearest misogyny shop, courthouse, or pig pen and go f***ing ape sh**.”
Lynchburg police referred the post to the FBI in an email the day after, the Daily Signal reported. The police asked the public for information on four unidentified suspects in the attack, but arrests were never announced.
The FBI also mentioned the A/I Collective’s tools in a criminal complaint that described a June 2024 communique on the NoBlogs site “Abolition Media,” which claimed responsibility for arson in California. The anonymous author showed an image of a burned police car and declared “solidarity with the resistance axis for Palestinian life.” The media site “is hosted on a server run by an organization based in Europe,” the FBI wrote, describing the A/I Collective.
Officials traced the communique to University of California, Berkeley student Casey Goonan, who was convicted of several bombings. A judge applied a terrorism enhancement to his sentence, giving him 19 years behind bars.
Abolition Media did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment. The blog has also posted content from Middle Eastern terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, including a July Hamas statement about how it executed an alleged “Zionist” collaborator in Gaza.
The State Department cited Goonan, Abolition Media, and Jane’s Revenge in its larger list of reasons why it would not let the A/I Collective go unchecked.
“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 department said Wednesday.
Surviving sanctions
No stranger to government scrutiny, the A/I Collective designed its programs to continue even if the organization dies.
The collective released a publicly available document in 2004 called “the Orange Book” detailing how to replicate the digital frameworks it created, according to a 2017 report in which A/I summarized its own history.
That 2017 account ties the collective’s origins to “a radical left hacking collective” in Europe and praises cyberattacks as “one of the most prolific areas of grassroots struggles.”
“A/I has spent twenty-five years preparing for the day when a server disappears,” the NoBlogs website “Sabot Media” said in a Thursday warning to leftists. “It knows how to replace a machine, move a service, restore encrypted data and continue operating after police or providers pull a plug. The United States is attempting something different. It is trying to frighten banks, hosts, registrars, infrastructure providers and supporters around the world into abandoning the collective.”
“Do not leave the infrastructure in one place,” the blog post said. “Do not leave the targeted to stand alone.”
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Trump’s sanctions are still a massive blow to extremist networks, said Kyle Shideler, an analyst at the conservative Center for Security Policy. Shideler testified for federal prosecutors in March in a successful terrorism case against a Texas antifa cell.
“I genuinely believe they thought the Trump admin would just flail around and do some performative stuff and they could laugh it off,” Shideler told the Washington Examiner. “They’re a bit surprised I think.”
