Bill Gates ratcheted up his feud with Elon Musk, accusing the world’s richest man of “killing the world’s poorest children” through what he said were misguided cuts to US development assistance.

Gates, who is announcing a plan to accelerate his philanthropic giving over the next 20 years and close down the Gates Foundation altogether in 2045, said in an interview that the Tesla chief had acted through ignorance.

In February, Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) in effect shut down the US Agency for International Development, the main conduit for US aid, saying it was “time for it to die.”

The co-founder of Microsoft, and once the world’s richest man himself,
said the abruptness of the cuts had left life-saving food and medicines expiring in warehouses and could cause the resurgence of diseases such as 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 Financial Times
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/05/bill-gates-accuses-elon-musk-of-killing-children-with-doge-led-usaid-cuts/