Bill Gates has not held back on his criticism of Elon Musk, slamming the billionaire’s role in a government department as ‘killing’ children.
Since Donald Trump was sworn into office on January 20 this year, the landscape across the US – and the global stage – is looking notably different than it did 100 days ago.
Countless executive orders and decisions flying out of the White House have made monumental changes in the country and to the world, with it hard to pick the most controversial of them all.
However, Trump’s appointment of his billionaire ‘First Buddy’ Elon Musk to spearhead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut the federal workforce and save money is certainly up there and hasn’t gone amiss to the likes of fellow billionaire, Gates.
However, the philanthropist is less than impressed by Musk’s cost-cutting initiatives under DOGE, going on to accuse him of ‘killing the world’s poorest children.’
DOGE has seen dozens of agencies and departments shrink in recent months, particularly in foreign aid initiatives like the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as Musk said back in February it was a ‘criminal organization’ and it was ‘time for it to die.’
USAID had around 10,000 staff and was the world’s largest single donor of humanitarian aid, having spent over $40 million across the world in the fiscal year 2023.
Yet the world’s richest man saw it as a black hole for federal funds, and announced closing it down.
“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm it in,” Musk said at the time. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing.”
It’s here where Gates takes issue the most, slamming the moves to cut US development overseas as misguided.
Speaking to the Financial Times, the Microsoft co-founder said: “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one.”
He went on to say the severe cuts have seen life-saving medicines and food supplies expiring in warehouses while countries suddenly starved of the resource could see a surge in diseases like measles, HIV and polio.
Gates went on to accuse Musk of cancelling grants to aid a hospital in Gaza that prevents women passing HIV on to their newborn babies under a false claim that the US was distributing condoms to Hamas in the region.
“I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” he said.
The comments come as the 69-year-old, also a billionaire, has clashed with Musk before.
In 2012, the Tesla boss signed a Giving Pledge alongside dozens of billionaires who promised to give away at least half of their wealth, though Musk told Gates the initiative was ‘bulls***’.
It also comes as Gates plans to splash almost his entire fortune in the coming decades before closing from his Gates Foundation for good in 2045.
He announced plans to spend $200 billion on global health, development and education on a mission to eradicate diseases through vaccines, maternal and child health and curing HIV.
However, he said his private endeavours are just a drop in the ocean from the shortfall created from the cuts to USAID which was $44 billion last year alone.
Still, in a letter outlining his decision, Gates said: “People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them. There are too many urgent problems to solve.”
UNILAD has reached out to the US government for comment