U.S. sanctions Italian digital collective Autistici/Inventati as a global terrorist entity

On August 26, 2026, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Italian collective Autistici/Inventati — known as A/I — as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), adding it to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list.

What Washington alleges

The action was announced by the State Department and Treasury under Executive Order 13224, the 2001 framework aimed at those who provide material support to terrorism. The same move sanctioned Britain's Palestine Action and the transnational group Masar Badil. Treasury described A/I as "an Italy-based entity that supplies specialized digital architecture, tools, and services for Antifa cells and other violent far-left extremists", citing website hosting, encrypted email, chat and video conferencing, streaming, and the infrastructure behind its Noblogs blogging platform, and stating that services went to organisations already under sanctions — the PKK is named. The OFAC entry lists an address in San Giuliano Terme, in the province of Pisa, an establishment date of 2001 and a "secondary sanctions risk" notation.

What the designation does

Property and interests in property of the designated entity that fall under U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from transacting with it; foreign financial institutions risk secondary sanctions. A/I stresses that SDGT is a sanctions category, not the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation, although the economic consequences are concrete. OFAC also issued General License 36, authorising the wind-down of certain transactions involving A/I until September 25, 2026 — an exit window rather than permission to keep the relationship going.

The collective's response

A/I rejects the allegations. Founded in March 2001, the volunteer-run collective says it provides free digital self-defence tools — email, hosting, mailing lists, chat, videoconferencing, streaming — to activists and associations, without commercial use or monetisation of user data, and funded only by donations. It says it was never formally notified of the decision and learned of it from the media, and that it never received requests for information about, or takedown orders concerning, the users named by Washington.

Effects beyond U.S. borders

Consequences appeared within days. On August 28 the autistici.org domain became unreachable; the collective says it was detected in "serverHold" status and attributes the intervention to the .org registry, Public Interest Registry, while noting that a direct OFAC order has not been established. The same day, the PayPal account used to collect donations was closed without notice, and the Noblogs platform was compromised: an attacker escalated to privileged access through a software vulnerability and exfiltrated data including usernames and hashed passwords — though not IP addresses, which the platform does not log by default. A/I has launched a public campaign calling for action against the sanctions.