Ok, probably a silly idea but... Maybe have some kind of competition for young people involving something like math / computer science / essay writing / puzzle solving / jailbreaking LLMs... Give a cash prize for the top three, and send books to a bunch of the runners up.

Sounds like something that would take a lot of organization effort, so somebody would need to be excited enough about this idea to want to spearhead it.

Possibly look for other skills / career paths, besides math and computer science?  Glancing through 80,000 Hours' list:

- AI governance and policy -- I'm guessing that seeking out "policy people" will be a non-starter in Russia, either because it's dangerous or because there are fewer such people (not whole graduating classes at Harvard, etc, waiting to become the next generation of DC elites).

- AI safety technical research -- of course you are already thinking about this via IOM, IOI, etc. Others have mentioned trying to expand to LLM-specific competitions / clubs / etc.  Alternately, consider expanding beyond IOM to more generic super-smart-person competitions, like chess tournaments?

- Biorisk research, strategy, and policy -- I'm guessing that tying HPMOR to any kind of biosecurity message would probably be a bad idea in Russia.  Although HPMOR does have a very strong anti-death message, which might resonate especially well with medical students with aspirations to discover cures for diseases like cancer, alzheimers, the aging process, etc.  So maybe giving it away to high-achieving medical students (with no biosecurity message attached; rather a general triumph-over-death message) could be sort of impactful -- obviously it's unrelated to AI, but perhaps this idea is better than giving it away to random libraries.

- Cybersecurity -- sounds like you're already thinking about this.

- Expert in AI hardware -- it's less clear that this field needs HPMOR-pilled rationalists at the helm, and it's my understanding that Russia's semiconductor industry is far behind the rest of the world.  But idk, maybe there's something worth doing here?

- China-related AI safety and governance paths -- this is policy-related, thus perhaps has the same problems I mentioned earlier about AI governance/policy roles.  But it does seem like Russians might have a natural comparative advantage in the field of "influencing how China thinks about AI", compared to people from contries that China percieves as rivals / enemies.  I'm not sure what kind of competitions / scholarships / fellowships / study-abroad programs you could use to target giving the books -- you'd be looking for technically-minded, ambitious, high-achieving Russian speakers with ties to China or interest in China, and ideally also an interest in AI -- but maybe there's something.  (Go tournaments??)

- Nuclear weapons safety & security -- probably a non-starter in Russia for political reasons

You've probably thought of this and have reasons for and against it, but maybe some hotels (bedside) and restaurants (on tables) would be willing to take copies too? Seems much less likely that libraries though.

huh?

I would want people who might meaningfully contribute to solving what's probably the most important problem humanity has ever faced to learn about it and, if they judge they want to work on it, to be enabled to work on it. I think it'd be a good use of resources to make capable people learn about the problem and show them they can help with it. Why does it scream "cult tactic" to you?

Some of these schools should have the book in their libraries. There are also risks with some of them, as the current leadership installed by the gov might get triggered if they open and read the books (even though they probably won’t).

It’s also better to give the books directly to students, because then we get to have their contact details.

I’m not sure how many of the kids studying there know the book exists, but the percentage should be fairly high at this point.

Do you think the books being in local libraries increases how open people are to the ideas? My intuition is that the quotes on гпмрм.рф/olymp should do a lot more in that direction. Do you have a sense that it wouldn’t be perceived as an average fantasy-with-science book?

We’re currently giving out the books to participants of summer conference of the maths cities tournament — do you think it might be valuable to add cities tournament winners to the list? Are there many people who would qualify, but didn’t otherwise win a prize in the national math olympiad?