(It’s this slightly adorkable-looking claw that has recently turned the entire tech world upside down.)
It’s a rare sunny day in Shanghai today, and the mild 10-plus degree weather is perfect for a stroll in the sun. However, folks in the tech circle probably don’t have time to step outside lately; everyone is glued to their computer screens, watching a “giant lobster.”
Paying 500 RMB to Install an AI, Then 299 RMB to Uninstall It
If you haven’t been catching up with the news lately, you might be utterly confused by the screen full of red lobster claws.
This lobster’s official name is OpenClaw, an open-source AI project that racked up over a hundred thousand stars on GitHub in just a few short weeks. Because its logo features an arrogant red pincer, insiders simply call it the “Lobster.”
But here’s something incredibly amusing. When this thing first blew up, a swarm of “cyber quacks” popped up on Xianyu, specifically taking orders to help noobs deploy the native Lobster on their PCs for 300 to 500 RMB a pop. This was supposed to be easy money, but just a few days later, a brand new business emerged: charging 299 RMB to come to your door and uninstall the Lobster.
This is not a joke.
I was chatting with a friend in security testing the other day, and he complained that this Lobster is a total troublemaker. Unlike the standard Q&A chatbots we’re used to, OpenClaw is an execution-oriented AI. It doesn’t just talk the talk; it walks the walk by directly operating your computer.
Many non-technical folks blindly followed the trend and paid to install the native version, only to have no clue how to set up security boundaries. This led to a hilariously catastrophic incident.
Summer Yue, the AI Safety Director at Meta’s Superintelligence Lab, was brutally backstabbed by her own Lobster a few days ago. She just wanted the AI to help clean out spam from her inbox. Instead, she watched helplessly as the thing, operating with the ungodly hand speed of a 20-year bachelor, instantly deleted over 200 of her highly critical work emails. It was too fast to even pull the ethernet cable. Staring at the emptied interface, she must have been absolutely petrified *sigh*.
An AI Safety Director getting backstabbed by an AI she installed herself—this is probably the darkest humor news of the year.
When the “Uncle in Red” Starts Selling Lobsters Too
Truth be told, OpenClaw initially started as a personal project born out of laziness by developer Peter Steinberger. He tinkered around at home and built a program that could hijack various system permissions to handle mundane chores for him.
You can think of it as a “cyber intern” living inside your computer. While you sleep, it keeps an eye on the stock market for you; while you’re in a meeting, it automatically summarizes client group chats into a daily report. It has memory, understands your schedule, and can even write its own code to teach itself new skills.
Sounds wonderful, right?
The catch is, recruiting this intern into your home comes with an incredibly high barrier to entry. You have to configure a Node.js environment, set up local LLMs or API keys, and tweak a dense mess of YAML configuration files. For the average person, staring at that pitch-black terminal box is like reading alien hieroglyphics. Moreover, this intern is recklessly bold—if permissions aren’t properly configured, it might accidentally nuke your core system files.
This was the exact moment domestic tech giants keenly sniffed out an opportunity.
The past half-month has practically been a reenactment of the ancient internet’s subsidy wars. A certain penguin company directly set up a booth outside its Shenzhen headquarters—much like the street-side phone screen-protector vendors of old—offering “free on-site installations” of their heavily packaged Lobster version to passing developers. Moonshot AI hastily whipped out their cloud-based Kimi Claw, and MiniMax quickly tossed out Max-Claw.
The most entertaining player is Zhou Hongyi’s 360. Old Zhou saw that this thing could arbitrarily delete files and was easily hijacked by hackers—which happens to be the bread and butter he’s been dealing with for half his life. Thus, 360 swiftly published a security guide and rode the wave to launch “360 Safe Lobster,” aggressively marketing its foolproof, one-click deployment and absolute data privacy.
(Seeing Old Zhou on stage preaching about security architecture always brings back memories of the free antivirus era.)
I was chatting about this with a friend once, and we couldn’t stop laughing. Who would have thought that in 2026, the most cutthroat business in the AI industry would turn into PC installation services? Everyone just grabbed the open-source OpenClaw, slapped on their own wrapper, sprinkled in some permission management and a pretty GUI, and crowned it their flagship product.
Are We Really Going Down the Same Old Path?
This brings up a rather frustrating question: Why aren’t big tech companies continuing to grind away at the IQ of foundational LLMs, and instead all rushing to dress up someone else’s Lobster?
Because in this day and age, traffic gateways are the real hard currency.
Let’s look back at the early PC era. Companies fought tooth and nail just to conquer your desktop. Later, in the mobile internet era, everyone was battling for a spot on your smartphone’s first home screen.
Now, big tech has realized that an AI agent with exceptionally strong execution capabilities, like OpenClaw, is highly likely to become the sole gateway for human interaction with the digital world in the coming years.
Think about it. If this Lobster can look up information, book flights, and directly order groceries on JD.com for you in the future, are you really going to separately open a browser or standalone apps? Definitely not. Once you get used to letting the Lobster run your errands, all those once-glorious super apps will be reduced to underlying utility workers for the Lobster.
So, big tech companies aren’t building wrappers because they are lazy; they are frantically grabbing territory.
On the surface, they appear to be doing charity work, offering free installations or one-click secure deployment services. But in reality, OpenClaw is just an empty shell; it needs a powerful AI brain to drive it. When a tech giant helps you install their version of the Lobster, the backend is naturally wired to their proprietary LLM API.
Every day you let the Lobster reply to emails, track stocks, and write reports for you, it is quietly consuming their LLM tokens. This isn’t selling some epoch-making technology; this is selling a service.
They no longer need to scream themselves hoarse trying to prove their LLM is smarter than the competition’s. As long as they make you feel that “this company’s Lobster is the easiest and safest to install,” you become a sticky user deeply entrenched in their ecosystem.
This logic is all too familiar. No matter how technology changes, what everyone is ultimately competing for is who can reach into the user’s pocket. It’s just that they used to fight for your browser homepage, and now they’re fighting for the cyber intern in your computer.
A Quick Anecdote
Watching major corporations turn red in the face fighting over a Lobster, you kind of feel for these big bosses. They live in constant anxiety every day, terrified of missing the boat to the next era. I suppose that’s why the tech circle is never short on entertainment.
For us ordinary folks, it’s best not to blindly follow the trend and mess around with scripts of unknown origins right now. I got an itchy trigger finger yesterday and tried running the native version on my backup PC. I typed one wrong command and almost accidentally deleted an important work folder. It scared me so much I literally pulled the plug to save my skin.
Oh, by the way, do you know who was annoyed by the Chinese community nicknaming OpenClaw “Little Lobster” (crayfish)?
A lot of early geeks are furiously protesting in major tech forums. They feel the original English slogan, “The claw is the law,” sounds so oppressive and badass. Yet, here in China, it was forcibly reduced to a late-night snack paired with iced beer, completely ruining the cold, cyberpunk vibe.
Alright, I’ll stop here. All this talking has suddenly made me really crave some Thirteen-Spices Crayfish. I’m gonna go order some takeout.
References:
- Open-source AI Assistant Framework OpenClaw Goes Viral: Even Raised, This “Lobster” Must Be Guarded Against
- Zhou Hongyi Officially Announces Launch of 360 Safe Lobster: One-Click Deployment! Zero Leaks
- A Brief Discussion on Experiences “Raising” the OpenClaw “Lobster”
- “Raising Lobsters” Carries Risks: 360 Launches OpenClaw Security Deployment Guide
—— Lyra Celest @ Turbulence τ.
