Chapter 27 Great Minds Think Alike

More than two years ago, when Gu Cheng first arrived in this world, he was nothing more than an ordinary man with extraordinary intelligence and remarkable foresight.

At that time, there were perhaps hundreds of thousands on Earth with talents comparable to his.

So before fully understanding the situation, he still held a certain reverence for “history.”

Even knowing his own exceptional abilities, he regarded terms like “prosperity” and “recession” as mere background colors, never once thinking to change them.

At most, he dared only say, “Regardless of whether the macroeconomy is in decline or boom, I must find my own path to wealth and success.”

But everything changed in September 2000.

In that moment, he realized that the so-called “grand macro historical event”—the total collapse of the internet bubble occurring two months after the inauguration of the ‘little immortal’ president—could, in fact, be influenced by his butterfly effect.

He triggered new applications of zombie networks and Gray Pigeon, prematurely dismantling humanity’s trust evaluation system for internet advertising, thereby advancing the inevitable collapse.

Yet even then, he only allowed a slight crack to form in his belief that “macro trends are immutable.”

He knew how to expose false prosperity but had no idea how to rebuild healthy prosperity.

To describe this with a term from the way of the sword, “Shu-Ha-Ri”:

Before Gu Cheng appeared, the internet world was in the “Shu” stage—following the rules; Gu Cheng’s butterfly effect expedited the “Ha” stage—breaking the rules—but he still didn’t know how to reach the “Ri” stage—transcending the rules.

“Shu” is blind trust without distinguishing truth from falsehood;

“Ha” is piercing through that blind optimism and swinging to the opposite extreme, condemning everyone;

“Ri” is reshaping a pair of eyes that see through the fog, distinguishing truly valuable internet traffic and advertising from fraudulent data.

However, after accepting the “system task” of persuading the senior executives of China Unicom to believe that the internet winter was ending and to accelerate China’s network infrastructure development, Gu Cheng pondered deeply over the course of a week or two.

Finally, at a meeting convened by Cardinal Qi and after a fierce debate with Professor Wu, his mind cleared completely and he achieved sudden insight.

“I was the one who added the final straw that plunged this world into recession. Today, I will be the one to pull it back.”

With this grand aspiration, he gathered a few absolutely trustworthy, elite programmers and, over about ten days, instructed them in secret to refine several algorithmic concepts he had proposed.

Note, these were only algorithmic concepts, not the algorithms themselves.

After all, Gu Cheng was not someone who memorized everything. As a data master from decades in the future, he knew the evolutionary history of many outdated algorithmic ideas but could not possibly recite all the algorithms.

Nor did he know how to adapt any single algorithm to fit the current era’s technological context or hardware environment.

For example, an algorithm designed for parallel execution on NVIDIA GPUs could be dozens of times less efficient if run on today’s environment relying solely on Intel CPUs without deep learning frameworks.

It was better to let people of this era handle the concrete implementation of ideas; Gu Cheng was fit only to outline and control strategic direction.

……

Ten days later, at the end of May.

Two days before a concert, he took time to fly to the capital city to seek an audience with Li, the boss of Baidu.

Gu Cheng’s strategy required a partner.

Because he himself lacked a powerful search engine and the vast big data accumulated from years of Chinese netizens’ search behavior.

Only Li possessed both.

This matter could only proceed through cooperation, using this as leverage to persuade Li to allow Gu Cheng to acquire a stake in Baidu, along with some off-the-record terms.

Among the BAT giants, Li had once been the most illustrious.

Gu Cheng’s current status and reputation in the internet circle were not yet as high as Li’s, but he was wealthier. Essentially, they met as equals, and Li dared not be presumptuous before him.

Gu Cheng went straight to Baidu’s headquarters in Zhongguancun without delay.

It was their first meeting.

Li had once been considered the most handsome in the internet world, but Gu Cheng, crossing over from the entertainment industry, outshone him utterly in this regard. Li’s proud “young and promising” aura paled beside Gu Cheng, who was fifteen years his junior.

Li poured Gu Cheng a cup of coffee, and as they settled on the sofa in host and guest positions, he half-jokingly asked, “You’re quite the rare visitor, Gu. Making so much money from gaming, and yet still willing to cooperate with Baidu. You’re not here to throw money around to buy shares, are you?”

Though he said this lightly, Li was inwardly confident: my shareholders aren’t some worthless digital companies like Yingke; if you want shares, forget it.

Gu Cheng sipped his coffee calmly and said, “Of course I want shares, but it will be mutually beneficial. I’m not here to throw money at you. After hearing me out, you’ll want to cooperate.”

“Oh? Then I’m all ears for your grand ideas,” Li said with a composed and courteous expression.

“I wonder, Mr. Li, what’s your outlook on the internet winter? Do you think this recession will pass quickly?” Gu Cheng didn’t reveal his true intention directly.

Some matters require the other party to fully grasp the difficulty before the value of a solution provider can be revealed.

A bit of small talk was necessary.

“The recession probably won’t end soon. Usually, a downturn of this magnitude takes three to four years for everyone to calm down and rebuild trust. But it depends on human will. If there’s a strong leader with iron fists and an unprecedented technological or managerial breakthrough, it’s not impossible to cut through the chaos quickly.”

Li’s answer came after just a moment’s thought.

Clearly, he often reflected on this issue, and his insight was far beyond that of the old-timers like Professor Wu.

Gu Cheng was amused by Li’s elegance: “The internet is an open, flat world, yet you expect an iron-fisted strongman? Isn’t that grasping at straws? That’s not something an internet insider would say.”

Li smiled and explained, “It’s an old saying. Most recessions in the world can be exited early through intervention by a strong leader. Hitler and Roosevelt were such men.”

Gu Cheng clearly didn’t grasp the essence of Li’s words and couldn’t help but sneer, “You mean like their massive demand stimulation? Mr. Li, I hate to say this, but that kind of stimulus might work for other recessions, but it’s useless for the internet. If that’s your interpretation, I have to seriously underestimate your insight.”

Li naturally rejected Gu’s guess, “I’m definitely not talking about demand stimulation—that’s zero-tech. Roosevelt and Hitler’s greatest moves weren’t massive construction projects.”

“Oh? Then I’d like to hear your esteemed opinion. What do you think were Roosevelt and Hitler’s greatest anti-recession measures?”

In Chinese economic and history textbooks, Keynesian theory dominates, so when classic examples of recession stimulus are mentioned, Hitler and Roosevelt’s massive infrastructure projects are usually the first cited.

But Li said their most brilliant measures were not large-scale construction, sparking Gu’s interest.

Could it be that great minds think alike?

For a moment, Gu even fancied joking about Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu each writing “fire attack” in their palms.

If so, the subsequent discussion would be much easier.

Li spoke thoughtfully: “Roosevelt’s most classic move was establishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; Hitler’s was the bank guarantee reform based on Dr. Schacht’s advice.

After the Great Depression, saving industry was relatively easy—just stimulate orders. But saving the financial system was very difficult. If one bank faced a run, even if others were healthy, panic withdrawals would spread. Ten birds on a tree—shoot one, the rest fly away.

The FDIC tackled this at the root: collecting insurance premiums from all commercial banks across the U.S., bearing total guarantee responsibility for any bank’s deposits upon failure, thus eliminating public doubts about deposit safety. That’s what saved America’s financial system.

The internet and finance are both virtual economies, so to save them, orders are not key; rebuilding the credit system is paramount.”

Gu was surprised—Li’s Peking University education was not wasted; beyond computer science, he was quite cultured.

“Bravo!” Gu clapped several times, delighted. “With your insight, Mr. Li, you save me a lot of needless words.”

“How so?” Li perked up, eager to hear Gu’s ideas.

“Mr. Li, would you be interested in establishing an ‘Internet Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’ to rebuild this credit system? I need access to the search engine and search behavior data; without that, there’s no chance for cooperation.”

Li felt his blood pressure spike, adrenaline surging wildly: “Could you be more specific?”

“I first need a cooperation framework agreement based on ‘efficacy’ for equity and commitments. After all, I only have an algorithmic system and guiding principles. You know, neither copyright law nor patent law protects algorithms or ideas. If I reveal everything, I lose my trump card.”

“That’s a tough demand. At least you should share your expected results and roadmap with me first.”

Gu outlined the core vision for a platform called ADSENS to Li.

He also presented the algorithmic pathway and feature iteration list developed by his team over ten days, explaining everything in fifteen minutes.

Li was utterly shocked.

He had always thought Gu was just a lucky man good at business with some artistic talent.

He never imagined Gu was a genius in algorithmic thought.

A thinker.

He suddenly felt his degrees from Peking University and New York University had been somewhat wasted.