Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk, DOGE of causing deaths of 'world's poorest children'

Elon Musk has repeatedly expressed pride in his involvement with dismantling USAID.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates launched a scathing attack on Elon Musk, accusing the world’s richest man of causing the deaths of children in the poorest countries by overseeing the shutdown of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Trump administration.

Gates, who recently announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would close by 2045, criticised Musk for his role in slashing foreign aid, warning that the decision had already had devastating humanitarian consequences.

“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates told The Financial Times in a wide-ranging interview. He alleged that Musk had “acted through ignorance” when he dismantled the USAID, which had served as a critical conduit for delivering food, medicine and disease prevention programmes to impoverished communities around the world.

In February, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a cost-cutting unit established under President Donald Trump and headed by Musk, finalised the shutdown of USAID. At the time, Musk posted on X (formerly Twitter), “USAID is a criminal organisation. Time for it to die.”

Gates said that the abrupt halting of USAID operations had led to life-saving supplies languishing in warehouses. “It left life-saving food and medicines expiring in warehouses,” he said, adding that the funding cuts threatened to reverse decades of progress in tackling diseases such as polio, measles and HIV.

He highlighted the case of a hospital in Mozambique’s Gaza Province, where a key programme that helped pregnant women prevent the transmission of HIV to their babies was terminated following the aid cuts. According to Gates, DOGE ended the funding after mistakenly believing that the money was being used to supply condoms to Hamas in Gaza in the Middle East.

“I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” Gates told The Financial Times.

Despite the criticism, the White House stood by Musk and defended his role in the administration. In a statement released on Thursday, a spokesperson said, “Elon Musk is a patriot working to fulfil President Trump’s mission to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.” The statement continued, “The backbenchers should celebrate the selfless efforts of America’s most innovative entrepreneur who is dedicating time to support American taxpayers.”

Musk has repeatedly expressed pride in his involvement with dismantling USAID. A Reuters report revealed that approximately 80 per cent of the agency’s programmes had already been scrapped. In 2023 alone, USAID reportedly spent nearly $44 billion on global development and humanitarian aid efforts.

Gates, who was once the world’s richest man himself, has pledged to give away virtually all of his wealth through the Gates Foundation, announcing that the organisation would close permanently in 2045. “This is a change from our original plans,” Gates wrote in Gates Notes.

“When Melinda and I started the Gates Foundation in 2000, we included a clause in the foundation’s very first charter: The organisation would sunset several decades after our deaths. A few years ago, I began to rethink that approach. More recently, with the input from our board, I now believe we can achieve the foundation’s goals on a shorter timeline, especially if we double down on key investments and provide more certainty to our partners.”

The Gates Foundation plans to increase its annual budget to $9 billion by 2026, eventually reaching $10 billion per year. According to Reuters, the foundation’s total spending by its planned closure in 2045 could reach $200 billion.

Nonetheless, Gates warned that private philanthropy cannot fill the void left by government aid cuts. “He could go on to be a great philanthropist,” Gates said of Musk in an interview with The Times Magazine. “In the meantime, the world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children.”

Gates concluded with a warning to the Trump administration, saying, “Governments will come back to caring about children surviving.”