Billionaire entrepreneur Bill Gates criticized Elon Musk for advising the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to slash the budget of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), accusing the world’s richest man of “killing the world’s poorest children.”
In an interview with the Financial Times, Gates suggested DOGE’s cuts were too abrupt and left lifesaving food and medicines to expire in warehouses. He said the Trump administration’s moves to eliminate USAID came at the cost of a resurgence of diseases like measles, HIV and polio.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” he told the Times.
The Trump administration effectively shuttered the agency earlier this year, with any remaining responsibilities getting absorbed into the State Department’s portfolio.
Gates told the outlet that under Musk’s direction, DOGE carried out mass layoffs at USAID without having an understanding of the agency or how it operated. The Microsoft co-founder worked closely with the foreign aid agency for years through joint efforts with the Gates Foundation.
The interview comes the same day the billionaire philanthropist announced plans to spend almost all of his money over the next 20 years in an effort to have maximum impact on global health issues like finding cures for diseases such as HIV and eradicating polio. He estimated his foundation would spend more than $200 billion on global health, development and education in the next 20 years, at which point the foundation will close.
“It gives us clarity,” Gates said. “We’ll have a lot more money because we’re spending down over the 20 years, as opposed to making an effort to be a perpetual foundation.”
He previously held the top spot on the list of the world’s wealthiest people and now comfortably sits near the very top. The former tech executive said he would pass on less than 1 percent of his wealth to his children.
“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,” Gates said in a letter outlining his decision. “There are too many urgent problems to solve.”
