Far-Right Hacker Touting Cyber Attacks on Leftist Sites Has Close Ties to Pentagon Influencer

The Autistici/Inventati collective, a web-hosting service provider for the international far left, faced a challenging week in August. On August 26, the State Department imposed sanctions on the Italian collective, labeling it as an extremist group operating digital infrastructure for violent Antifa cells. The group, known for its NoBlogs.org hosting platform, experienced a cyberattack on August 28, with a hacker gaining access to the platform and vandalizing its homepage.

Minutes after the incident was captured by an internet archive, a far-right hacker named DataRepublican shared screenshots of the vandalized homepage on X, leading to its promotion by other far-right accounts. The hacker, AstraRCE, is believed to have a close relationship with the Pentagon, as Pounds, former Pentagon press corps member, was recently employed by the federal government as part of a program to recruit right-wing influencers into jobs at the Department of War.

The connection between DataRepublican and AstraRCE dates back to several major hacks of leftist digital infrastructure, raising concerns about the relationship between a Trump administration employee and an anonymous online personality promoting real-time updates on hacks against the left. Freedom of the Press Foundation's Harlo Holmes warned that the government's support for an influencer who praises domestic hacking efforts marks a significant escalation in the Trump administration's crackdown on dissent, blurring the line between surveillance and directly entering individuals' machines.