In a billionaire’s spat not anyone expected, Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates accused the SpaceX boss, Elon Musk of killing children; a claim that sent the SpaceX boss into a strange kind a frenzy.
Now, the world is tuning in as two of the world’s largest tech titans are heating up the feud on the public stage…
Bill Gates accusations
8th May, Bill Gates announced his plan of donating his entire 200 billion dollars fortune by 2045, and he will be targeting the world’s poorest communities and the countering of poverty.
Gates told CBS that by committing all this money over the course of the next 20 years, we can do a lot more, “We could save tens of millions of lives through the Gates Foundation,” he said.
According to the man who is 69 years old and back in 1975 co-founded Microsoft, his net worth $108 billion will “drop 99% over the next 20 years.”
In a blog post, the man gives a detailed account of why he decided to give away the “virtually all” of his fortunes and cites Andrew Carnegie’s 1889 essay, “The Gospel of Wealth” as the inspiration for his decision.
“It argues that the rich have the responsibility to return their resources to society,” the ambitious philanthropist writes in in May 8. As Carnegie contends, ‘the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced’”. He adds, “People will say a lot of things about me when I die but I will make sure that words like ‘he died rich’ will not form part of the story”.
Challenges
And through accelerated giving, Gates states that he wants to “put the world on a path to ending preventable deaths of moms and babies and lifting millions of people out of poverty”. I am convinced that we can leave the succeeding generation more prepared and better off to fight off the next round of challenges.”
However, he is concerned that efforts by the Gates Foundation will be undermined by large scale changes on the part of governments which drastically cut funding and support to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) – the organization responsible for combating globle hunger and disease.
USAID dismantled
In February, USAID was quickly broken up by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and “more than 90% of USAID’s contracts for humanitarian and development work around the world” were canceled, the AP reports.
Their moves, the news source writes, “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.”
Even though this has unfathomably catastrophic implications for millions of people around the world, Musk cultivated his success with a boastful tweet that read, “feeding USAID into the woodchipper”.
Child killer
Those cuts, according to Gates, could mean that millions of children would lose access to food, clean water and life-saving care. And as he puts it, there is one man to blame.
Gates said, “The number of deaths will start going up for the first time…it’s going to be millions more deaths because of the resources.”
“The image of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one”, Gates added, referring to Musk, who is the richest man as he has an estimated net worth of $345 billion.
Soon enough Tesla CEO became aware of gates’ not so discrete attack.
“Gates is a huge liar,” Musk wrote in a tweet on the same day his co-giant of tech world termed him a child killer but without mentioning his name.
The gloves are officially off.
Are you Team Gates, combating poverty through contributions and a partnership with the government?
Or are you Team Musk, putting your money on innovation and free-market remedies to the largest human problems? What is your take on this? Then share this story so we can hear from others!