It was supposed to be the big Austrian thing after Red Bull, but the technology seems to still be in its infancy. The viral installation was followed by paid deinstallation – how an Austrian open-source tool put China into a state of emergency:

On Chinese online platforms, remote deinstallations are available for as little as a few dozen yuan, while on-site services cost between 500 and 1,500 yuan. A foreign website called SetupClaw even charges between 3,000 and 6,000 US dollars for the same service. Image: reddit/ollama

Beijing/Vienna – In the history of tech hypes, there are rarely moments as surreal as this: On Chinese second-hand platforms, providers offer their services – not for installing software, but for removing it. The tool is called OpenClaw, and it has thrown China into a state of emergency in recent weeks.

The rise: From hobby project to mass phenomenon

OpenClaw – previously known as Clawdbot and Moltbot – is a free, open-source autonomous AI agent developed by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger and first released in November 2025. The concept is brilliantly simple: The agent runs locally on your own computer and connects to tools like messaging apps, email, calendars, and other systems – and handles tasks largely autonomously.

What was seen in the Western tech community as an interesting niche project developed into a real cultural phenomenon in China. According to the American cybersecurity firm SecurityScorecard, OpenClaw usage in China recently even surpassed that in the US. The nickname the tool has received in Chinese networks is telling: yǎng lóngxiā (养龙虾) – in German: “breeding lobsters” – a reference to the tool’s red lobster logo.

The industry jumps on the bandwagon

The hype wasn’t limited to private users. China’s largest tech conglomerates recognized the potential and acted quickly: Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, ByteDance’s Volcano Engine, JD.com, and Baidu adopted OpenClaw or developed their own derivatives. This gave rise to products like Tencent’s WorkBuddy, Minimax’s MaxClaw, and MoonShot’s Kimi Claw.

Particularly noteworthy: Local governments offered funding of up to 10 million yuan – equivalent to about 1.4 million euros – for so-called “one-person companies” built on OpenClaw. The message was clear: Anyone who builds a business with the tool can expect state support.

The crash: Security vulnerabilities shake trust

But behind the shiny facade of the hype lurked serious security issues. Users soon reported a mix of technical glitches and structural risks: The AI misunderstands commands, access controls are inadequate, and the handling of user data remains opaque.

The real bad news came from security researchers: According to monitoring service Shodan, over 100,000 OpenClaw instances worldwide were directly accessible on the internet – without any authentication. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially warned that the OpenClaw gateway does not check by default where incoming requests come from. A single click on a malicious link is enough for an attacker to take over all system rights of the agent via the local port.

On top of that: OpenClaw stores access data in plain text, uses insecure programming patterns, and has no privacy policy. With over 300 contributors and a large portion of AI-generated code, the project was, in the assessment of security researchers, just one step away from a massive data breach. Consequently, the Chinese government instructed state-owned companies and authorities not to install OpenClaw on office computers.

The bitter aftermath: Deinstallation as a service

What followed was a mass exodus – but it proved more difficult than expected. Even after deinstalling via the web interface or removing access data, sensitive data remains accessible on the computer. Completely revoking access on all connected platforms is far more complicated than most users anticipated.

The result: A quirky market for professional deinstallation flourished. On Chinese online platforms, remote deinstallations are available for as little as a few dozen yuan, while on-site services cost between 500 and 1,500 yuan. A foreign website called SetupClaw even charges between 3,000 and 6,000 US dollars for the same service.

The circle closes in a bitter way: Many Chinese users first paid for the installation – and then again for the removal. Whether their data is really secure in the process remains unclear.

Lessons

The story of OpenClaw in China is more than a quirky tech anecdote. It shows how hype-driven adoption – fueled by state incentives, platform competition, and social media – can lead to basic security questions being overlooked in the heat of the moment. The name “breeding lobsters” sounds harmless. The risks the tool brought were not.

By Okay Altinisik | 24-3-2026, 21:41:22