Bill Gates was impressed by Elon Musk's cooperation with the Ministry of Efficiency. In an interview with the Financial Times, he described Musk's work as hurting the most vulnerable person on the planet. “The picture of the richest people in the world killing the poorest children in the world is not a pretty child.” He repeated the line more directly in his conversation with The New York Times, noting that while Musk could continue to be a great philanthropist, he said: “At the same time, the richest people in the world are involved in the death of the poorest children in the world.”
Gates zeroed out Musk’s cuts, and he cuts off the International International Instrunt, which he calls amazing and worse than ever. “I think it'll cut 20% cuts. Now, it's like 80% cuts. Yes, I didn't expect it.” He hasn't shyed away from blaming these cuts directly on Musk, saying, “He's the one who cuts the AID budget.”
The results of these cuts will be devastating, in large part the result of a complete misunderstanding of the United States Agency for International Development. Gates said Musk's weird claim that one of the consequences of the government's $50 million condoms spent on Hamas was the cancellation of grants to a hospital in Mozambique's Gaza province that will prevent the spread of HIV to children. “I really want him to go in and meet the children who are now HIV-infected because he cuts the money,” Gates told the Financial Times.
He also did not say what the result of Musk's work was. “There are millions of children who die due to these cuts,” he told the New York Times. “Repairing it won't be as easy as tearing it down.” Gates said he currently expects funding to be disrupted for four to six years. Although he is still optimistic that the aid organizations he is involved with can reduce child mortality for a long time, he said: “The cuts are so dramatic that we will have a tough time even if we get some recovery.”
Humanitarian aid is declining globally, so there is no obvious candidate to strengthen and fill the gap left by the Trump administration’s apparent disdain to reach out to anyone outside the U.S. border (and frankly, most, and most), exacerbates this fact.
For Musk, he might think that the unfortunate side effects of cutting aid (large deaths) are just part of the necessary pain needed to make the basic cutting to be done. Except…not doing so. Musk initially claimed that he had cut $2 trillion from government spending, and so far his pseudo-institution claims only $162 billion, but experts from Musk observe can only verify $50.2 billion of that, accounting for 0.25% of the initial target.
So yes, there are millions of children and adults who may die because a billionaire waving his hand, stopping basic humanitarian efforts that he never understood, but at least he can rest assured that he knew he had also clearly failed on the way. Saying that we let people die to protect the richest, most vulnerable person in the world seems not a stretch.
