• Language Migration: The Ladybird project is transitioning its codebase from C++ to Rust to utilize a more mature systems programming ecosystem and memory safety features.
• Selection Rationale: Rust was chosen over Swift due to superior C++ interoperability, broader platform support, and an existing contributor base familiar with the language.
• Pragmatic Compromise: Despite Rust's mismatch with the web platform's inheritance-heavy object model, it has been adopted as the most viable path forward for safety guarantees.
• Initial Target: The migration began with LibJS, specifically the JavaScript lexer, parser, AST, and bytecode generator, due to their self-contained nature and test coverage.
• Automated Translation: Low-level code porting was facilitated by AI tools under human direction, completing 25,000 lines of code in approximately two weeks.
• Safety Verification: Performance and accuracy were validated through extensive test suites and lockstep testing, ensuring byte-for-byte identical output between the C++ and Rust pipelines.
• Non Idiomatic Code: The current Rust implementation intentionally mimics C++ patterns and register allocation to maintain compatibility during the transition period.
• Incremental Integration: The project will maintain a dual-language architecture, with the core team managing the gradual porting of subsystems while development continues in C++.

We’ve been searching for a memory-safe programming language to replace C++ in Ladybird for a while now. We previously explored Swift, but the C++ interop never quite got there, and platform support outside the Apple ecosystem was limited. Rust is a different story. The ecosystem is far more mature for systems programming, and many of our contributors already know the language. Going forward, we are rewriting parts of Ladybird in Rust.

Why Rust?

When we originally evaluated Rust back in 2024, we rejected it because it’s not great at C++ style OOP. The web platform object model inherits a lot of 1990s OOP flavor, with garbage collection, deep inheritance hierarchies, and so on. Rust’s ownership model is not a natural fit for that.

But after another year of treading water, it’s time to make the pragmatic choice. Rust has the ecosystem and the safety guarantees we need. Both Firefox and Chromium have already begun introducing Rust into their codebases, and we think it’s the right choice for Ladybird too.

Porting LibJS

Our first target was LibJS , Ladybird’s JavaScript engine. The lexer, parser, AST, and bytecode generator are relatively self-contained and have extensive test coverage through test262, which made them a natural starting point.

I used Claude Code and Codex for the translation. This was human-directed, not autonomous code generation. I decided what to port, in what order, and what the Rust code should look like. It was hundreds of small prompts, steering the agents where things needed to go. After the initial translation, I ran multiple passes of adversarial review, asking different models to analyze the code for mistakes and bad patterns.

Results

The requirement from the start was byte-for-byte identical output from both pipelines. The result was about 25,000 lines of Rust, and the entire port took about two weeks. The same work would have taken me multiple months to do by hand. We’ve verified that every AST produced by the Rust parser is identical to the C++ one, and all bytecode generated by the Rust compiler is identical to the C++ compiler’s output. Zero regressions across the board:

Test suite

Tests

Regressions

test262

52,898

0

Ladybird regression tests

12,461

0

No performance regressions on any of the JS benchmarks we track either.

Beyond the test suites, I’ve done extensive testing by browsing the web in a lockstep mode where both the C++ and Rust pipelines run simultaneously, verifying that output is identical for every piece of JavaScript that flows through them.

If you look at the code, you’ll notice it has a strong “translated from C++” vibe. That’s because it is translated from C++. The top priority for this first pass is compatibility with our C++ pipeline. The Rust code intentionally mimics things like the C++ register allocation patterns so that the two compilers produce identical bytecode. Correctness is a close second. We know the result isn’t idiomatic Rust, and there’s a lot that can be simplified once we’re comfortable retiring the C++ pipeline. That cleanup will come in time.

What’s next

This is not becoming the main focus of the project. We will continue developing the engine in C++, and porting subsystems to Rust will be a sidetrack that runs for a long time. New Rust code will coexist with existing C++ through well-defined interop boundaries.

We want to be deliberate about which parts get ported and in what order, so the porting effort is managed by the core team. Please coordinate with us before starting any porting work so nobody wastes their time on something we can’t merge.

I know this will be a controversial move, but I believe it’s the right decision for Ladybird’s future. :^)

Andreas Kling

Founder & President

• Stablecoin Economic Initiative: Officials are exploring a dollar-pegged cryptocurrency to facilitate digital transactions and revitalize the economy in Gaza.
• Administrative Oversight: The project is led by the Board of Peace in coordination with the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza and the Office of the High Representative.
• Electronic Payment Infrastructure: Plans involve creating a secure digital backbone to support financial services, e-learning, and healthcare while allowing for user control over data.
• Asset Pegging Strategy: The proposed digital currency would be tied to the US dollar rather than acting as a sovereign Palestinian currency.
• Physical Currency Challenges: The initiative addresses the severe shortage of Israeli shekels and the destruction of banking infrastructure caused by ongoing conflict.
• Financial Control Objectives: Transitioning to digital payments aims to reduce the circulation of physical cash to prevent its acquisition by Hamas.
• Connectivity Improvements: Implementation requires upgrading Gaza's existing 2G network to high-speed access to ensure the functionality of digital platforms.
• Economic Linkage Concerns: Internal discussions include potential risks regarding the economic separation of Gaza from the West Bank if the system lacks central oversight.

Officials working with Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” are exploring setting up a stablecoin for Gaza as part of efforts to reshape the devastated Palestinian enclave’s economy, according to five people familiar with the discussions.

The talks around introducing a stablecoin — a type of cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to a mainstream currency, such as the US dollar — are at a preliminary stage, and many details of how one could be introduced in Gaza remain to be determined.

But officials have discussed the idea as part of their plan for the future of the enclave, where economic activity collapsed during Israel’s two-year war with Hamas and the traditional banking and payments system has been severely impaired.

A person familiar with the project said the stablecoin was expected to be tied to the US dollar, with the hope that Gulf Arab and Palestinian companies with expertise in the field of digital currencies will help spearhead the effort. 

“This will not be a ‘Gaza Coin’ or a new Palestinian currency, but a means to allow Gazans to transact digitally,” the person said.

Work on the idea is being led by Liran Tancman, an Israeli tech entrepreneur and former reservist who is now working as an unpaid adviser to Trump’s “Board of Peace”, the US-led body tasked with rebuilding Gaza, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Others involved in the project include officials from the strip’s new Palestinian technocratic government, the 14-member National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), as well as the Office of the High Representative led by former UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov. Both bodies work under the “Board of Peace”.

According to the person familiar with the project, the “Board of Peace” and NCAG will decide on the stablecoin’s regulatory framework and access, although “nothing definitive” has yet been finalised.

Speaking at a meeting of the “Board of Peace” in Washington last week, Tancman said the NCAG was working on building “a secure digital backbone, an open platform enabling e-payments, financial services, e-learning, and healthcare with user control over data”, but did not elaborate.

“The Board of Peace, NCAG, and the Office of the High Representative for Gaza are looking into all options that will jump start the Gazan economy,” a Trump administration official said. The US has previously pushed for the broader use of dollar-backed stablecoins.

The Palestine Monetary Authority serves as the central bank for both the occupied West Bank and Gaza. But it does not have the power to issue its own currency, and the formal currency in the Palestinian territories is Israel’s shekel. While dollar transactions take place in Gaza, they are limited in comparison to those done in shekels.

Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in 2023, however, access to physical shekels in Gaza has been severely limited as cash machines have been destroyed or closed, and Israel has blocked deliveries of new cash to the strip. 

This has left traders and brokers in control of the increasingly limited supply of hard currency, with many charging exorbitant fees to disburse it.

It has also pushed an increasing number of Gazans to use electronic payment systems.

Access to physical Israeli shekels in Gaza has been severely limited by the war © Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg

Another person familiar with the talks over introducing a stablecoin — in which transactions are anonymous but traceable — said the idea behind the initiative was to “dry Gaza from cash so Hamas can’t generate any”.

The person familiar with the project argued that increasing the scope of digital transactions would allow commerce to continue without being beholden to the whims of the Israeli government.

However, other people familiar with the discussions expressed concerns that a stablecoin could potentially also be used to further detach the economies of Gaza and the West Bank, both of which Palestinians seek as part of a future state, particularly if a Gaza-only stablecoin were not under the control of the PMA.

“It will be much more difficult [to maintain economic links between Gaza and the West Bank] if they have no means of easy payment between the two, so that Gaza would be almost like a self-contained economy,” said one. “That would be a concern.”

The person familiar with the project disputed this. “No one is trying to divide Gaza from the West Bank,” the person said. “It’s only meant to allow Palestinians to transact digitally.”

Another potential complication of relying on a stablecoin would be the fact that Gaza suffers from frequent power cuts and Israel has long limited Gazans to using slow 2G network technology.

In his comments at the “Board of Peace” last week, Tancman said that Gaza’s 2G network “will be upgraded with free high-speed access to essential services” by July.

Additional reporting by James Politi in Washington

• Obsolescence Of Ad Management: General-purpose AI models and agents are integrating connectors for advertising platforms, rendering niche automation tools for ad management redundant.
• Persistence Of Data Ownership: Customer Relationship Management systems and large-scale lead databases remain secure as AI lacks independent data storage and massive proprietary contact harvesting capabilities.
• Decay Of Outreach Infrastructure: Automation of outreach and the underlying infrastructure, such as domain setup, are expected to be fully absorbed by AI agents.
• Survival Of Enterprise Workflows: Complex enterprise systems, including Customer Data Platforms and high-volume creative production for large brands, are insulated from immediate AI disruption.
• Shift To Model Context Protocol: The Model Context Protocol is emerging as a dominant platform where AI selects specific tools for users, mirroring the early impact of the mobile app store.
• Rise Of Agentic Commerce: Procurement is shifting toward AI-to-AI transactions where agents prioritize technical specifications and value over brand recognition or traditional sales tactics.
• Saturation Of Synthetic Content: Social media platforms face a projected influx of AI-generated content and bot activity, making organic human attention increasingly difficult to capture.
• Value Of Human Intangibles: As technical execution becomes commoditized, market advantages shift toward human-centric qualities such as brand storytelling, taste, and high-volume experimentation.

I woke up today and Claude killed my startup. We got several hundred paying clients in 2 months, was growing like crazy. One Claude/Manus feature and our close rate dropped from 70% to 20%. Claude just made our entire product category obsolete.

We built an AI agent that automates ad management for you. Like, you can give it access to all your Google and Meta accounts and it will manage it for you. Pretty cool. Customers loved it.

Claude and Manus both released connectors for Meta Ads. Claude still can't make changes in ad accounts — it can only do analysis, and it has no access to Google Ads. But give it a few months, and it will. So building here feels pointless.

Like, every marketer will have Claude Cowork, ask "launch me a million-dollar ad campaign. make no mistakes" and go go go.

But what's next?

We need to think about the overall future of the GTM stack.

Here are the big GTM categories today:

1. Own data — CRMs will be fine. Claude can't store your customer data.

2. Lead databases — Clay, Apollo, RB2B will be fine. Claude can't collect 1B phone numbers and emails.

3. Outreach automation — dead soon. You'll be able to tell Claude "Spam all YC founders offering my SaaS" and it'll just do it.

4. Outreach infra — also dead. Agents will soon buy domains and set up outreach automation on their own.

5. Niche tools — server-side tracking and similar will survive.

6. Creatives — mostly dead. In a few months Meta and Google will generate them inside ad accounts. There will be some players who do top-tier large volume creatives for huge advertisers, but for small businesses it'll be inside Google/Meta.

7. Enterprise complex workflows — like CDPs, customer engagement for huge brands. They are safe and will be doing exceedingly well. And waiting for more cool players in the space.

What's coming for marketing and distribution

AI made building free and distribution harder than ever. Everyone ships now. Good luck getting anyone to notice. Current GTM tech is pre-agentic era — it's not up to speed with where things are going. It can't sell to agents. But I'm a huge believer in the future of this space.

When building is free, distribution becomes everything — and that means more money, attention and energy will flow here than ever.

A few predictions:

• MCP is the new App Store. Claude picks a tool via MCP. No marketplace, no comparison — the AI picks one tool and the user never sees alternatives. This is the iPhone App Store in July 2008.

• Ads inside LLMs are the next trillion-dollar channel. Someone will build the ad network that connects thousands of chatbots the way Google connected websites. That company will be generational.

• Agentic commerce is coming. AI agents don't pay extra for brand. They compare specs, read reviews, pick the best value. Every category races toward commodity pricing.

• AI-to-AI sales will break enterprise playbooks. AI agents will read docs, compare specs, analyze pricing. They don't watch demos or get charmed.

• Social: completely botted and hijacked. The best GTM people know how to work the algorithms and get billions of views for free. It's a volume game once you figure out how to create decent, engaging content. Very soon — if not already — 98% of TikTok and Instagram will be fake AI content boosted by bots to go viral.

• Brand is more important than ever. It's almost impossible to replicate with AI. Last moat for selling to humans: story, trust, taste.

• The gap between good and bad marketers will explode. Anyone can generate AI slop for ~$0. It doesn't work. Taste, viral instincts, and storytelling are your alpha.

• Marketing is still a volume game. Try every channel, scale what works, do 10,000x of it. The tools die, but the hustle doesn't. We need human hustlers who can test everything and scale it.

What we're going to do next as a team

Our current business will be fine anyway. We knew what was coming and started actively pivoting a few weeks ago. Now we also build complex workflows for huge ad agencies managing 100s of accounts — like some of our clients manage 600 accounts with 6 people. Pretty insane.

We also sell AI-native ad agency services to SMBs because we know how to sell to small gas stations in Texas type of businesses, and they love how our AI and humans genuinely care about them.

But I definitely want to think more about the future of distribution in the post-Claude era and what cool and great things we can build here. Stay tuned.

[

](/irabukht/article/2025846968245948795/media/2025843484087975936)

• Sanctions Evasion: Cryptoasset Exchanges Provide Transaction Routes For Russian Entities To Conduct Cross Border Payments Outside Traditional Banking Oversight
• Currency Conversion: Platforms Facilitate The Conversion Of Rubles Into Cryptoassets For Transfer To Overseas Brokers To Avoid Regulatory Intermediaries
• Bitpapa Operations: This Peer To Peer Exchange Uses Wallet Rotation Strategies To Hide The Russian Origin Of Funds And Minimize Exposure Metrics
• ABCeX Infrastructure: Operating From Moscow This Service Has Processed Eleven Billion Dollars While Utilizing Obfuscation Methods To Mask Counterparty Connections
• Exmo Connectivity: Although Claiming Geographic Separation Analysis Shows Exmo Dot Com And Exmo Dot Me Share Identical Custodial Wallet Infrastructure And Pooled Funds
• Rapira Trading: This Georgia Incorporated Exchange Facilitates Ruble Based Trading And Significant Transaction Volumes With Sanctioned Entities Through Its Moscow Office
• Aifory Pro Services: Specialized Cash To Crypto Providers Offer Virtual Payment Cards To Bypass International Service Restrictions For Russian Users
• High Risk Links: Multiple Exchanges Maintain Direct Financial Connections To Sanctioned Platforms Like Garantex And International Entities Such As Iranian Exchanges

Cryptoasset exchanges that maintain operational or financial connections with Russia continue to enable the circumvention of international sanctions. These platforms provide transaction routes that allow Russian entities to make cross-border payments shielded from traditional banking oversight.

Fiat currencies such as rubles can be converted into cryptoassets through these services, before being transferred across borders, without passing through any intermediaries. They can then be converted to local currency through overseas cryptoasset brokers or exchanges.

Despite growing regulatory pressure, many of these exchanges, some with nominal registrations outside Russia, still facilitate high volumes of cryptoasset trading linked to sanctioned entities. This article outlines several such services, many of which are themselves yet to be sanctioned.

Bitpapa

Bitpapa is a peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptoasset exchange with corporate registrations in the UAE. However, it primarily targets users in Russia, allowing rubles to be exchanged for a range of cryptoassets.

It was sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in March 2024 for supporting Russian sanctions evasion. Evidence of its role in evasion includes its high exposure to other sanctioned entities: Approximately 9.7% of its outgoing crypto funds are destined for OFAC-sanctioned targets, including 5% specifically to the sanctioned exchange Garantex.

Furthermore, blockchain analysis suggests Bitpapa manages its wallets specifically to evade sanctions enforcement by constantly rotating addresses. This technique is designed to prevent transaction monitoring systems from identifying Bitpapa as a counterparty and to hide the Russian origin of the funds from services that subsequently receive them.

Selected illicit and high-risk Russia-centric counterparties of Bitpapa.

ABCeX

ABCeX facilitates both order-book and P2P ruble-to-cryptoasset trading. It operates an office in Moscow’s Federation Tower, a location previously occupied by the sanctioned exchange Garantex. ABCeX utilises a wallet obfuscation strategy to prevent cryptoasset transactions from being linked to the service.

ABCeX has processed at least $11 billion in cryptoassets, with significant amounts being sent to the sanctioned Garantex and Aifory Pro (see below)

Direct transaction flows between ABCX and sanctioned or high-risk Russia-centric entities.

Exmo (<a href="http://Exmo.com" rel="nofollow">Exmo.com</a> and Exmo.me)

Exmo provides a case where purported geographic operational separation is contradicted by on-chain data. Following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Exmo claimed to have exited the Russian market by selling its regional business to Exmo.me.

However, blockchain analysis demonstrates that <a href="http://Exmo.com" rel="nofollow">Exmo.com</a> and Exmo.me continue to share the same custodial wallet infrastructure. Cryptoassets deposited into either platform are pooled into identical hot wallet addresses, and withdrawals for both platforms are issued from the same addresses.

This indicates there is no real separation at an operational level, allowing funds from the Russian-facing platform to be co-mingled with the Western-facing entity. Exmo has conducted more than $19.5 million in direct transactions with sanctioned entities, including Garantex, Grinex and Chatex.

Direct interactions between Exmo and sanctioned or high-risk entities with a Russian nexus.

Rapira

Rapira is a Georgia-incorporated exchange with a Moscow office that facilitates ruble-based trading. It has engaged in direct cryptoasset transactions to and from the sanctioned exchange Grinex totaling more than $72 million. Rapira’s Moscow offices were reportedly raided as part of an investigation into suspected capital flight to Dubai.

Direct interactions between Rapira and sanctioned or high-risk Russia-linked entities

Aifory Pro

Aifory Pro specializes in cash-to-cryptoasset services in Moscow, Dubai and Türkiye. It also serves as a "Foreign Economic Activity Payment Agent" for international trade, for example between Russia and China. And it explicitly facilitates the bypass of service restrictions by offering virtual payment cards and Apple Pay-enabled cards that utilize a customer's USDT balance to pay for foreign services like Airbnb and ChatGPT, otherwise blocked in Russia.

Further evidence of high-risk activity includes its direct financial links to Abantether, an Iranian exchange, to which it has sent nearly $2 million in cryptoassets.

Direct cryptoasset transaction flows between Aifory Pro and sanctioned or high-risk Russia-linked entities 

Russia

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• Account Restrictions: Google Suspended AI Ultra Subscribers Paying 24999 Monthly For Using OpenClaw Third Party OAuth Access Without Providing Prior Warning Or Specific Explanations
• Service Integration: Gemini Related Restrictions Threaten Access To Linked Services Including Gmail Workspace And Cloud Storage Due To Shared Account Infrastructure
• Anthropic Policy: Anthropic Formally Banned Third Party OAuth Token Usage For Claude Accounts Citing Issues With Token Arbitrage Economics And Defensive Telemetry Requirements
• Security Risks: OpenClaw Faces Over 21000 Exposed Instances Along With Supply Chain Attacks And Infostealers Targeted At Capturing Operational Context And Cryptographic Keys
• OpenAI Strategy: OpenAI Hired The OpenClaw Creator And Endorsed Third Party Harness Usage For Codex Positioning Itself Against Competitive Restrictions From Other Providers
• Economic Factors: Providers Claim Subscription Pricing Is Based On Human Usage Patterns And Automated High Throughput Workflows Create Sustainable Financial Gaps Compared To API Pricing
• Developer Response: Users Are Migrating To Local Open Source Models Like Kimi K25 Or Qwen 35 And Private VPS Configurations To Avoid Provider Dependency And Sudden Loss Of Access
• Lack Of Support: Impacted Google Customers Reported Receiving Only Automated Replies Or No Human Communication Regarding The Status Of Their Long Term Accounts And Paid Subscriptions

Google has restricted accounts of AI Ultra subscribers who accessed Gemini models through OpenClaw, a third-party OAuth client, according to a growing thread on the Google AI Developer Forum. The restrictions arrived without warning or explanation, cutting off users paying $249.99 per month from Gemini 2.5 Pro and, in some cases, threatening access to Gmail, Workspace, and other linked services. The enforcement comes two days after Anthropic updated its legal terms to explicitly ban OAuth token usage in third-party tools, including OpenClaw.

Two of the three largest AI model providers locked down third-party access in the same week. Same calculation. Same week.

Key Takeaways

• Google restricted AI Ultra subscribers ($249.99/month) who used OpenClaw OAuth, with no warning or explanation
• Anthropic banned third-party OAuth token usage two days earlier, citing token arbitrage economics
• OpenClaw faces 21,639 exposed instances, infostealers targeting config files, and supply chain attacks
• OpenAI hired OpenClaw's creator and endorsed third-party harness usage, widening the competitive gap

$249.99 a month buys you access, not flexibility

The forum thread that started this carries a title worth reading in full: "Account Restricted Without Warning, Google AI Ultra, OAuth via OpenClaw." The original poster described losing access to Gemini 2.5 Pro after connecting through OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent framework that routes existing subscriptions through alternative interfaces. No terms of service violation was cited. No explanation followed.

Other users arrived with matching stories. Some submitted appeals and received only automated replies. Others couldn't find a human representative at all. One user wrote that they tried creating a fresh Google account, only to discover that one restricted too. "No warnings, no nothing, just a ban after being a customer for decades," the user wrote, threatening to cancel YouTube, Google Ultra, and every other Google product. Another called the situation what it felt like from the inside: "I'd have to sue a trillion-dollar company just to get the measly fee I paid."

Nearly three thousand dollars a year, and the best Google could offer was a community manager promising to "share this with our internal teams." No timeline. No specifics. The thread kept growing.

And here is where Google's architecture turns an annoyance into something worse. Google's AI products sit on top of the broader Google account infrastructure. A restriction triggered by Gemini usage can cascade into Gmail, Workspace, and cloud storage. All tied to the same credentials. Several forum users flagged this exact concern. For a developer whose entire business runs on Google services, getting your AI subscription flagged doesn't just cut off one product. It puts everything at risk.

Anthropic wrote the rules first

Google's crackdown didn't arrive in a vacuum. Anthropic, two days earlier on February 20, had revised its Consumer Terms of Service to spell out what had been loosely implied since February 2024: OAuth tokens from Claude Free, Pro, and Max accounts are only permitted in Claude Code and Claude.ai. Using them anywhere else, including OpenClaw, violates the terms.

What makes the timing notable is that Anthropic's contractual language in Section 3.7 had already forbidden unauthorized third-party access since at least February 2024. For two years, that clause sat in the terms while tools like OpenClaw and OpenCode quietly let users supply Claude subscription keys anyway. Anthropic had tolerated the practice, or at least failed to enforce against it, until the economics forced their hand.

"Using OAuth tokens obtained through Claude Free, Pro, or Max accounts in any other product, tool, or service, including the Agent SDK, is not permitted and constitutes a violation of the Consumer Terms of Service," the updated compliance page states.

Anthropic engineer Thariq Shihipar provided the business reasoning in a January social media thread. Third-party harnesses create "unusual traffic patterns without any of the usual telemetry that the Claude Code harness provides," he wrote. That makes debugging impossible when users hit rate limits or account bans. "They don't have any other avenue for this support."

The Register's Thomas Claburn framed the economics bluntly. Anthropic sells subscription tokens at a discount compared to API pricing. An all-you-can-eat buffet priced with certain usage expectations. Third-party harnesses broke those expectations by letting subscribers extract more value than the subscription model assumed. Token arbitrage. Pay the flat rate, route tokens through a tool that burns through them faster than anyone planned for.

On Thursday, OpenCode pushed a commit removing support for Claude Pro and Max account keys. The commit message cited "anthropic legal requests." Policy language turned into enforced code in less than a week.

OpenAI, emboldened, leaned into the gap. Thibault Sottiaux from OpenAI pointedly endorsed using Codex subscriptions with third-party harnesses. Competitive positioning dressed up as developer friendliness.

OpenClaw sits at the center of all of it

OpenClaw keeps generating headlines, though not the kind its community wants. The open-source agent framework, formerly known as Clawdbot and then Moltbot, has amassed over 200,000 GitHub stars since launching in November 2025. Sam Altman announced on February 15 that OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger would be joining OpenAI. OpenClaw would transition into a foundation structure with OpenAI backing.

But popularity and security have run in opposite directions. Censys identified 21,639 exposed OpenClaw instances sitting on the public internet as of January 31. SecurityScorecard's STRIKE team found hundreds of thousands more carrying potential remote code execution risks. Five CVEs were patched between January 25 and January 30, including a one-click RCE vulnerability that needed two attempts to fix properly before version 2026.1.30 closed the remaining gaps.

Infostealers have already adapted. Hudson Rock disclosed in mid-February that a Vidar variant had exfiltrated an OpenClaw user's full configuration, including gateway tokens, cryptographic keys, and the agent's soul.md file containing its operational instructions. Alon Gal, Hudson Rock's CTO, told The Hacker News the malware wasn't even targeting OpenClaw specifically. A broad file-grabbing routine "inadvertently struck gold by capturing the entire operational context of the user's AI assistant."

Then came the supply chain attack. ClawHavoc, discovered by Koi Security in late January, used professional-looking skills uploaded to ClawHub, OpenClaw's plugin marketplace. The skills instructed users to install a "helper agent" that actually deployed the Atomic Stealer infostealer. Full remote control over the victim's OpenClaw instance and every service it touched.

Alex Polyakov, founder of AI red teaming firm Adversa AI, built SecureClaw in response. An open-source audit tool running 55 hardening checks mapped to OWASP and MITRE frameworks. Polyakov doesn't oversell it. "We don't claim to 'solve' prompt injection. But we do make it significantly harder through multi-layer defense."

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The buffet is closing

Strip away the vendor names and the pattern is visible. Somewhere inside Google and Anthropic, finance teams stared at usage dashboards and saw the same problem. AI model providers had priced subscriptions assuming users would interact through first-party interfaces, at a human pace, with predictable usage curves. OpenClaw and tools like it shattered that assumption by letting subscribers route tokens through automated, high-throughput agent workflows. The math stopped working for providers who had been subsidizing access.

Google and Anthropic landed in the same place, but Anthropic at least told people what was happening. Updated the legal terms. Had an engineer post the reasoning on social media. Gave tool makers a few days to adjust. OpenCode removed Claude support by Thursday. Messy, but legible.

Google just started restricting accounts. No policy update appeared. No public statement went out. No explanation reached users paying $249.99 a month. Google's product engineering team confirmed to at least one forum user that their account "was suspended from using our Antigravity service," Google's developer-facing branding for its Gemini AI platform, but offered no details on what triggered the enforcement or how to avoid it in the future.

The developer forum thread, still growing, is the only public record of what happened. For a company that built OAuth and champions it across every other product line, from Gmail to YouTube to Google Drive, the silence on why OAuth access to Gemini triggers account restrictions is baffling.

What developers are actually facing

Short-term advice in developer communities has been blunt: stop using third-party OAuth clients with AI subscriptions immediately. Revert to native interfaces. Consider API key access, which carries per-token pricing but avoids the automated enforcement. Some developers have started migrating to local models entirely, running Kimi K2.5 or Qwen 3.5 on their own hardware to eliminate provider dependency altogether. One widely circulated Medium post detailed a migration from a $200-per-month Claude Max setup through OpenClaw to a $15-per-month dual-VPS configuration running open-source models.

The trust damage runs deeper than any single workaround can fix. Developers choosing an AI platform now have to weigh a new variable: the risk that a provider will retroactively restrict how you access what you've already paid for. Anthropic at least telegraphed the change. Google blindsided its own paying customers.

But the more consequential question sits behind all of these workarounds. If subscription pricing was always subsidized, and providers are now enforcing the implicit limits that made those subsidies viable, then the real cost of AI model access is higher than what anyone has been paying. The arbitrage window that OpenClaw and similar tools exploited didn't create artificial demand. It exposed the gap between what providers charge for subscriptions and what the underlying compute actually costs to run.

OpenAI is the outlier for now, welcoming third-party harness usage and hiring OpenClaw's creator. That looks generous. It might also be a bet that owning the developer relationship and the agent infrastructure is worth more than protecting subscription margins in the short term. Whether that holds depends on how fast OpenAI's own costs grow as agent workloads scale.

None of that helps Google's AI Ultra subscribers today. They paid for premium access to the most capable Gemini models. They connected through a standard authentication protocol that Google itself designed and promotes everywhere else. And they got locked out. The forum thread has dozens of replies now. Google has not issued a public statement, and no affected user has reported a restored account.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is OpenClaw and why does it matter here?

OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent framework with over 200,000 GitHub stars that lets users route existing AI subscriptions through alternative interfaces. Its OAuth-based access to Google and Anthropic models triggered account restrictions from both providers within the same week.

Why is Google restricting AI Ultra accounts?

Google has not issued a public explanation. Forum evidence suggests accounts are flagged when users access Gemini models through third-party OAuth clients like OpenClaw. No specific terms of service violation has been cited to affected users.

What did Anthropic change about its OAuth policy?

On February 20, Anthropic explicitly banned OAuth token usage from Claude Free, Pro, and Max accounts in any third-party tool. The underlying rule existed since February 2024 in Section 3.7 but was not enforced until token arbitrage made the economics unsustainable.

Can a Google AI restriction affect Gmail and other services?

Potentially yes. Google's AI products share the same account infrastructure as Gmail, Workspace, and cloud storage. Forum users reported concerns that a Gemini-triggered restriction could cascade into their broader Google account and business services.

What alternatives exist if third-party OAuth access is blocked?

Developers can switch to API key access with per-token pricing, use native provider interfaces, or migrate to local open-source models like Kimi K2.5 or Qwen 3.5. One documented setup replaced a $200/month subscription with a $15/month dual-VPS configuration.

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• Political Ascent: The tech-centric party Team Mirai secured 11 seats in Japan’s lower house during the February 2026 national elections.
• Technological Platform: Policy proposals focus on implementing government chatbots, self-driving transport, and leveraging artificial intelligence to modernize public services.
• Economic Efficiency: Leaders suggest that administrative savings generated by AI integration can be redirected to reduce pension and healthcare costs for citizens.
• Electoral Performance: The party received over three million votes, approximately 7 percent of the total, with significant support from urban voters in their 40s and 50s.
• Pragmatic Positioning: Analysts characterize the party’s approach as problem-solving oriented rather than traditionally partisan, specifically noting their refusal to support populist tax cuts.
• Expert Composition: The newly elected representatives are predominantly high-achieving professionals with backgrounds in engineering and degrees from elite global universities.
• Institutional Obstacles: The party faces a bureaucratic environment still reliant on legacy technologies such as fax machines and paper, alongside rules prohibiting digital devices in certain sessions.
• Cultural Context: Adoption is supported by a domestic cultural view of technology as a helpful tool for addressing Japan’s labor shortages and aging population.

A Team Mirai sign at the Tokyo office of Takahiro Anno, the party leader, after the elections this month.Credit...Kentaro Takahashi for The New York Times

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By Javier C. Hernández and Kiuko Notoya

Reporting from Tokyo

• Feb. 22, 2026

With a ponytail, an indigo suit and a black T-shirt covered in lines of computer code, Takahiro Anno stands out in the button-down halls of Japan’s government.

Mr. Anno, 35, a software engineer and lawmaker, leads Team Mirai, a political party founded by techies that showed surprising strength this month in national elections. The party came from nowhere to win an eye-popping 11 seats in the lower house of Japan’s Parliament by promoting government chatbots, self-driving buses and other Promethean new technologies.

“A.I. is like fire,” Mr. Anno, a member of Japan’s upper chamber, the House of Councilors, since last year, said in an interview last week at his office in Tokyo. “Everything will be changed.”

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping politics around the world, with officials turning to chatbots to help draft policies, and A.I.-generated misinformation spreading on a wide scale. In Britain, Denmark and elsewhere, A.I.-focused candidates and parties have started to appear on the ballot.

But few groups have had the success of Team Mirai (Team Future). Its leaders aim to use technology to make government more responsive and efficient — and to address issues like corruption and Japan’s acute labor shortage. They have said savings achieved through A.I. could be used to lower contributions to pension and health care plans for working-class families.

“Make slow politics fast,” said a campaign brochure. “Technology makes your life easier.”

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Mr. Anno in his office in Tokyo. “A.I. is like fire. Everything will be changed,” he said.Credit...Kentaro Takahashi for The New York Times

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A whiteboard in the office covered with buzzwords.Credit...Kentaro Takahashi for The New York Times

Team Mirai is still a small presence in the 465-seat lower house, the House of Representatives. But the rise was sudden, especially for a new group with only about 2,600 registered members.

The party, which had aimed to win five seats, ended up securing more than twice that number through Japan’s system of proportional representation. It garnered more than three million votes, almost 7 percent of all votes cast, and performed particularly well among urban people in their 40s and 50s, according to exit polls. The victory was so surprising that conspiracy theories circulated online suggesting that the engineers were part of a Chinese influence operation.

A critical reason for Team Mirai’s success, analysts say, is its contrarian stance on some hot-button issues. It argued that the consumption tax on food should be maintained, not suspended, going against a populist idea that was embraced by other parties.

“Voters may well have been attracted to its problem-solving, ‘neither left nor right’ approach,” said Tobias Harris, the founder of the advisory firm Japan Foresight.

Now Team Mirai’s newly elected representatives, with an average age of 40 and degrees from top universities, face an arduous task. They must work with established groups like the Liberal Democratic Party, led by Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, to pursue their policies.

The engineers have ambitions to build state-of-the-art databases that shine light on political donations and explain arcane bills. But they must deal with Japan’s bureaucracy, famous for its fealty to fax machines, floppy disks and paper. They are already running up against rules that ban laptops and tablets in some parliamentary rooms.

“There’s so much paperwork,” said Aoi Furukawa, 34, a newly elected lawmaker, as he worked inside Mr. Anno’s office on a recent day. A whiteboard was covered with buzzwords like “internet of things” and “plurality is here.”

Mr. Furukawa, who previously worked as an engineer in Silicon Valley, said he saw parallels between coding and writing legislation.

“A lot of people believe in our view of the future,” he said.

The party has tapped into sentiment among some voters that Japan needs to move more swiftly to develop and deploy artificial intelligence. While robots have long been part of the culture, Japan lags countries like the United States and China in adopting A.I.

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Aoi Furukawa, left, and other staff members inside Mr. Anno’s office. “There’s so much paperwork,” Mr. Furukawa said.Credit...Kentaro Takahashi for The New York Times

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Team Mirai campaign posters. The party won 11 seats in Parliament by promising a future of robots, self-driving buses, A.I.-powered weapons and government chatbots.Credit...Kentaro Takahashi for The New York Times

Team Mirai gained momentum in July, when Mr. Anno won the party’s first seat in Parliament.

In the Feb. 8 lower house elections, Team Mirai fielded 14 candidates — 11 men, three women — with degrees from institutions like the University of Tokyo, the University of California, Berkeley and London Business School, and experience at companies like IBM and Sony.

The candidates made the pitch that technology could help address everyday concerns, like the rising cost of living, and they spoke about the need for Japan to invest in scientific research. The party deployed a chatbot to explain and get feedback on its proposals, including cutting taxes for families with children and deploying driverless buses. (To date, the bot has fielded nearly 39,000 questions and received almost 6,200 suggestions.)

As Team Mirai’s freshman class of lawmakers settles into Parliament this week, Mr. Anno said he was hopeful they could make an impact.

Mr. Anno, who on the side has published a sci-fi thriller, “Circuit Switcher,” about a businessman being held captive in a self-driving car, said that some people in the West might see A.I. as a job killer or the cyborg assassin in “The Terminator.” But in Japan, he said, people are more likely to associate the technology with Doraemon, the cuddly robotic cat from a popular manga series.

“Japanese people do not fear A.I.,” he said. “We’re used to doing things with A.I.”

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Credit...Kentaro Takahashi for The New York Times

Javier C. Hernández is the Tokyo bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Japan and the region. He has reported from Asia for much of the past decade, previously serving as China correspondent in Beijing.

Kiuko Notoya is a Tokyo-based reporter and researcher for The Times, covering news and features from Japan.

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 23, 2026, Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Technology Evangelists Hope to Shake Up Japan With New Political Clout. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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