That really just makes it sound like Archive Team is a separate entity to provide plausible deniability for an organization that's already in another major lawsuit for copyright infringement.
Especially since a lot of the people at the IA would be proponents of archiving. It would make sense that at least some of them feel like the IA should be doing more and start a rogue group that takes their ideology to the extreme.
But again, that's just what it sounds like to me.
Anyway, you nailed it. If you walk into Internet Archive Headquarters and go over to the Jason Scott statue and click his little top hat, a door opens in the floor and you're immediately lifted down 40 stories to a glowing LED-and-pulsating techno music lair containing dozens of Archive Team members, desperately gathering all the data they can from the world because [fill in the blank here, I'm sure you've got something].
Basically, Men in Black but more awesome and with more red bull.
Never change, Hackernews
No, that's quite literally a link. "Link" is a metaphor for a chain, and that's how a chain looks: interlinked. It be a link if they were even located in the same building.
How does that actually link the two organizations?
By your extremely broad definition, every organization in the world is “linked” to every other by the fact that they all are Earth based. That’s technically correct I guess, but not even remotely helpful in actually establishing a connection between two organizations.