 
All paths are open to our young people, one would like to believe.
I hope so.
Have you heard this meme: ”How do you like it, Elon Musk?“
No.
But have you heard about Elon Musk?
Of course.
He is launching a Tesla, while Rogozin is creating an elevator to the moon.
An elevator to the moon? And so?
They’re in different leagues.
I can give you some other examples.
I can give you different examples. A group of young people from a graduating class showed up.
This whole group of people came.
Where?
To one of our institutes and created the Iskander.
This group of young people from a graduating class showed up and in a few years they created the Iskander (mobile short-range ballistic missile system)
One of the cutting-edge weapons that we are proud of. The best in the world.
Young people showed up and created the Peresvet.
These are the examples from the defense industry. They scored this success.
So, let them create a Tesla-like passenger car.
Prokhorov promised that he would make...
A plane?
Ah, yes, the Yo-mobile
He didn't succeed yet.
He promised, he showed it to me.
I even went for a ride in it. But this hasn’t been working out for him so far.
In the high-tech field and in the nuclear sphere
we’ve been making great strides.
We’ve beaten the competition, outperformed everyone,
we're the world's largest manufacturer
of nuclear units for power plants.
Not weapons, mind you. This is high-tech,
state-of-the-art technology.
If we look at military equipment, say military aviation,
we are really on top here.
We'll continue moving forward as well in the civilian sector.
We already have our own
pharmaceutical products, very good ones. And so on.
Step by step, it's gaining momentum.
I meant something different.
What?
When I mentioned Musk.
Though he is not an idol,
but some sort of an example for others.
Fine, but..
Whom can we offer up as an alternative, well, not an American...
We have Kaspersky.
I believe he is really good at what he does. He is a leader, without a doubt.
If the screws hadn’t been tightened,
if competition hadn’t been artificially stifled,
it would have been much better.
That’s exactly what crossed my mind right now.
How do you feel about the fact that according to one of the opinion polls half of [Russia’s] young people want to leave the country?
There are all sorts of opinion polls.
And target groups can also differ.
Some want to leave, others want to return.
As I have already said, the latter’s numbers are on the rise.
Certainly, if we want our people to fulfill their ambitions in their own country,
the state must boost its efforts to ensure this.
And we will do so.
I think that
the number of good specialists is steadily growing
and the fact that our specialists find employment in the global labor market means that we provide a good higher education.
Does the Leaders of Russia
contest live up to your expectations?
Yes, of course.
They are really great guys. However, not only is there this Leaders of Russia contest that we have,
but there is also Russia – Land of Opportunity. There are a whole number of mechanisms
that seem to be working very efficiently.
And what do you think the criteria is? The number of public appointees
or the number of proposals coming from…
Among the aforementioned projects, we don’t have a single contest
for a specific job or office.
We simply allow people to
expand their knowledge and capabilities
even more, yet simultaneously,
when working with these people, representatives of major corporations or ministries
and agencies pick out future employees.
Actually, by doing so
we have already found ministers, deputy ministers and even governors and deputy governors.
This is a very good social elevator.
Sirius is a little bit different.
Surely. It deals with youngsters, I mean.
Absolutely, but this is a method of working with gifted children.
We have never had…
Well, we had.
In Soviet times?
Yes…
when I was deciding
to create Sirius I... By the way, do you know how this idea emerged?
No.
Olympic facilities in the Imereti Valley.
Suggestions immediately started coming in
to dismantle something and relocate it somewhere.
But dismantling and relocation would cost us about the same as constructing something new.
It would be better to change the location and finally I decided to construct something new in some other place.
But how to make use of what is available?
At first, a simple, even primitive, thought entered my mind:
to use these facilities for children's sports.
But later I thought. Why just for sports?
We inherited a system of advanced education
and training from the USSR.
I mean physics and mathematics schools,
biology schools,
then conservatory music colleges,
ballet schools. We are proud of all this.
And, of course, sports, that is figure skating,
our prestigious sports
where we've got good capabilities and where we've been successful, and also hockey.
So, I came up with an idea of putting this together
Do you mean the original idea was yours?
Yes, yes, I came up with this.
And one colleague of mine who was invited there
told one of his colleagues:
"He's not going to succeed".
But why? He says: to start with,
your hockey players will beat up the math whiz kids.
Yet, nothing like this has occurred there.
Because kids, even
powerful athletic lads,
respect their peers who achieve
noticeable successes in their fields
because they know that this requires great efforts and talent.
So, Sirius…
By the way, this name – it was me who invented it.
I was sitting and thinking about the name
and suddenly I recalled that the brightest star in the sky is Sirius.
It is the gathering place for the brightest kids.
That is why I proposed this name. And the name stuck.
Because of course it did!
But why?
Putin said!
Anything can happen.
Here, we use the system
of selecting gifted kids established back in the Soviet Union.
I mean these physics and mathematics schools,
biology schools, music schools and so on.
From these schools,
every 21 days we pick a group of kids
for Sirius and arrange 21‑day training courses for them.
Then we pick out
those with the best potential.
It turned out to be a very good idea.
Moreover, do you know what is interesting and what I love about this?
Here, we see athletes communicating with math geniuses
while math geniuses
may go to see a hockey match or ballet performance for the first time.
Thus, they get involved with physical culture. This is really great. I like this very much.
The next step should be
to create a modern university. There, we have already
set up a scientific cluster
of laboratories
specializing in such priority fields.
There are several of them, four, I guess.
And then here we intend to create a technology park
consisting of a school, a university, and a scientific laboratory, where new innovations can materialize.
We'll integrate the whole process.
