On 26 August 2026, a dystopia that could have come straight out of a 1990s cyberpunk novel became reality.
The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio declared (yet another) war: not on a sovereign state, not on a dangerous subversive organisation, but on a small collective of Italian volunteers, Autistici/Inventati.
This small collective has been around for almost thirty years. It offers digital services (email, web space, mailing lists, video-conferencing systems, etc.) to anyone who cares about privacy and confidentiality, to anyone who does not want to hand over their data and metadata to corporations, US Big Tech firms in particular, which exploit our online behaviour to monetise, manipulate, persuade and pursue their perverse goals of domination and destruction.
At CIRCE, we have been talking for many years now about the importance of building and inhabiting digital worlds that are not made up solely by ‘technologies of domination’: toxic technologies serving the twisted, deadly purposes of a handful of billionaire sociopaths. We promote and develop convivial technologies: technologies made for communities, custom-built by those who use them to live better together, to have fun, to create, and to build a world where no one has to obey or command anyone else, not even machines.
For over twenty years, A/I has been offering this kind of service devoid of any commercial logic. It thrives on the solidarity and support of the communities that run through it; it belongs to the realm of mutual aid, of interdependence, of respect, of the rejection of war, of freedom of thought and speech, of civil disobedience, and of desertion in the face of the violence of established hierarchies.
All this clearly frightens a major nuclear superpower such as the United States of America, which feels the need to deploy its financial weapons by imposing sanctions against free citizens of a foreign country. Against anyone who has contact with A/I – that is, tens of thousands of people scattered all over the world.
These sanctions were, moreover, implemented immediately. In fact, since 28 August, PIR has blocked the domain autistici.org, which is no longer reachable. The server remains untouched and in place, but internet traffic cannot resolve the address to reach it. The A/I collective is working to restore the services’ functionality, but there is an urgent need for long-term strategic reflection. The internet is broken; it has been broken by the blows of Artificial Intelligence, proprietary software, the hunger for money, CDNs, streaming platforms, chat control, apps, smartphones, Web 2.0 and dot.coms. The internet has been broken for years and only stands because a few people care for common goods, and have the willingness to turn the crank when necessary.
We are taken by surprise by this frontal attack by the United States against a tiny Italian collective of hackers but the fact that Big Tech could not tolerate the existence of services outside their grim logic was already evident when, to send an email to a Gmail address from a non-Big Tech address, one has to cross fingers in the hope of getting through the increasingly aggressive anti-spam filters.
The President's Bros, the fascists in the US and the rest of the world, and the death-worshipping right-wingers scrambling for power cannot tolerate any narrative that dissents from their deadly and necrotic worldview. We may well be insignificant, but we represent a different worldview – one they find unbearable – which is why A/I comes across as a threat on the global geopolitical stage.
We must continue to work on building network infrastructures that are independent of the whims of today’s autocrats, particularly fascists and Nazis. Today more than ever.
For updates and further reading
- Autistici/Inventati's account on Mastodon
@cavallette@mastodon.bida.im - Autistici/Inventati website
- Convivial Technologies, in italian
- Bio-Organic Networks, in italian
- Rule by list - thanks Broomstick!
