In a billionaire showdown no one saw coming, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates accused the SpaceX boss Elon Musk of killing children, a charge that sent the SpaceX boss into a stratospheric frenzy.
Now, the whole world is waiting as two of this planet’s largest tech titans are turning up the heat in a public feud…
Bill Gates accusations
May 8th saw Bill Gates announce his intent to give away his whole $200 billion fortune by 2045 and that his focus was to lift the most poor in the world into financial security.
Spending all this money in the next 20 years, “we can get a lot more done,” Gates said to CBS about saving “tens of millions of lives”, through the Gates Foundation.
Says the 69-year-old, who co-founded Microsoft in 1975: “I’ll have a total net worth of zero in 20 years… My net worth – currently valued $108 billion – ‘will drop 99% over the next 20 years’”.
In his blog, Gates writes that the inspiration of donating “virtually all” of his fortunes came from an essay “The Gospel of Wealth” written by Andrew Carnegie in 1889.
“It argues that the rich need to give their resources back to society,” the enterprising philanthropist says on May 8. “‘the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced’ , argues Carnegie. He adds, “People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I will ensure that ‘he died rich’ is not among this list”.
Challenges
In accelerated giving Gates conveys his hope to “put the world on a path to ending preventable deaths of moms and babies and lifting millions of people out of poverty. I think we can leave the next generation in a better position and better equipped to fight the next set of challenges”.
But he fears that what is done by the Gates Foundation will be defeated by bold moves by the major government which cut down funding and support to the U.S. Agency for International development (USAID) – the body mandated to combat global hunger and diseases.
USAID dismantled
This was rapidly torn down by president Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE in February, with more than “90% of USAID’s contracts for humanitarian and development work around the world” canceled according to AP.
Their actions, according to the news source, “slashed $60 billion in assistance overseas and upended decades of U.S. policy that foreign aid helps American interests abroad by stabilizing other countries and building alliances.”
While the impact has been devastating to millions of people around the globe, Musk celebrated his success by sharing a boastful tweet of “feeding USAID into the woodchipper”.
Child killer
Those cuts, according to Gates, could mean millions of children losing access to food, clean water and life-saving medical care. And in his words there is only one man to blame.
“The number of deaths will begin to increase for the first time….it’s going to be millions more deaths because of the resources,” Gates said to Reuters during a May 8 interview.
“The image of the world’s richest man murdering the world’s poorest children is not a very pretty one”, Gates wrote, referring to Musk with an estimated net worth of $345 billion as the richest man.
It was not long before Gates’s not so subtle attack caught up with Tesla CEO.
“Gates is a huge liar”, The National Enquirer version of the world, Musk tweeted on the same day his fellow tech giant labeled him a child killer, but didn’t say his name.
The gloves are officially off.
Are you the Team Gates and using donations and government cooperation to combat poverty?
Or are you Team Musk and wagering on innovation and a free-market approach to solving the most vexing problems facing humanity? Let us know what you think of this and share this story so we can hear from others!
