Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has launched a blistering attack on Tesla CEO Elon Musk, accusing the world's richest man of "killing the world's poorest children" by backing huge cuts to US foreign aid. Gates made the remarks as he unveiled a plan to give away nearly his entire fortune—$200 billion (around ₹16.7 lakh crore)—by 2045 through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The 69-year-old billionaire said he is fast-tracking the closure of the foundation by the end of 2045, years earlier than originally intended. He hopes the money will help prevent millions of unnecessary deaths, eradicate diseases like polio and malaria, and pull people out of extreme poverty. Gates’s announcement comes as aid budgets around the world, particularly from the US, are being slashed. Under the Trump administration, with backing from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has faced massive cuts. Musk has publicly bragged about “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” Nearly 80% of the agency’s programmes—worth around $44 billion (₹3.7 lakh crore) in 2023—are set to be scrapped. “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates said in an interview with the Financial Times. In a separate interview with Reuters, Gates warned that the world could see millions more preventable deaths over the next few years if governments continue to pull back on funding. “The number of deaths will start going up for the first time… it’s going to be millions more deaths because of the loss of resources,” he said. Gates is increasing the Gates Foundation’s annual budget to $9 billion (₹75,000 crore) by 2026, rising to around $10 billion (₹83,000 crore) a year after that. But he stressed that even with this scale of philanthropy, private foundations cannot replace government funding. “There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people,” he wrote in a blog post. Gates and Musk, once aligned in their belief that wealthy individuals should use their money for good, have fallen out in recent years. Asked if he had appealed to Musk to change course, Gates said it was now up to Congress to decide what happens next with aid spending. Musk, who owns Tesla, SpaceX, and the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), responded to a clip of Gates speaking about the aid cuts by posting “Gates should be in prison.” The post was quickly deleted. Musk’s team did not respond to requests for comment. Despite their differences, Gates said he remains hopeful. “I think governments will come back to caring about children surviving,” he said. Gates made the announcement on the 25th anniversary of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Since its launch in 2000, the organisation has donated $100 billion (₹8.3 lakh crore), supporting efforts such as vaccine delivery through Gavi and the fight against HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria through the Global Fund. The foundation, which originally planned to operate for decades after Gates’s death, will now close after giving away almost all of his fortune—currently valued at around $108 billion (₹9 lakh crore). The final amount will depend on markets and inflation. While the foundation has been praised for saving millions of lives, it has also faced criticism for having outsized influence over global health policy, including at the World Health Organization, with little external accountability. Gates, who was at the centre of various conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic, said he has spoken with President Trump multiple times this year to stress the importance of global health investment. “The world does have values. That’s what my parents taught me,” Gates said. (With Reuters inputs)
