Bill Gates Slams Elon Musk Over Foreign Aid Cuts: “The World’s Richest Man Is Hurting the Poorest Children”
Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates is speaking out forcefully against Elon Musk, criticizing the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s leadership of a controversial new government agency aimed at cutting federal spending.
Appointed by President Trump to head the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk has overseen sweeping cuts across the federal workforce, including major reductions to foreign aid programs. One of the biggest targets has been USAID—the U.S. Agency for International Development—which Musk labeled a “criminal organization” and declared it was “time for it to die.” In February, he announced the agency would be shut down entirely.
USAID, with nearly 10,000 employees and over $40 billion in spending in fiscal year 2023, had long been the largest provider of humanitarian aid in the world. Gates, however, says the closure will have devastating consequences—particularly for vulnerable children in developing countries.
“The image of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates told the Financial Times. He warned that without USAID’s support, there could be a resurgence of diseases like HIV, measles, and polio in regions already facing extreme poverty.
Gates didn’t hold back: “I’d love for him to go and meet the children who are now infected with HIV because he cut that money.”
The two billionaires have clashed before. Though both signed the Giving Pledge—a commitment to donate the majority of their wealth—Musk reportedly called the initiative “bulls***” during a private exchange with Gates. Meanwhile, Gates has pledged to donate nearly all his fortune by 2045 and dissolve the Gates Foundation entirely, with plans to invest $200 billion into global health and education initiatives.
According to Gates, his efforts are dwarfed by the damage done by the estimated $44 billion gap left by USAID’s shutdown last year alone.
In a particularly contentious example, Gates accused Musk of blocking funding for a hospital in Gaza that provides treatment to prevent HIV transmission from mothers to newborns. Musk allegedly justified the move by claiming the U.S. was indirectly providing “condoms to Hamas.”
“There are too many urgent problems to solve,” Gates said in a recent letter about his giving strategy. “When I die, people will say many things about me—but I’m determined that ‘he died rich’ won’t be one of them.”
