In his sharpest rebuke of the world’s richest man, a distinction he once held, Bill Gates accused Elon Musk at least twice in the past week of “killing” children in the world’s poorest countries by cutting foreign aid under the Trump administration.
Mr. Gates, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, assailed Mr. Musk for the actions he has taken as the head of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency during interviews with The New York Times Magazine and The Financial Times.
He said that Mr. Musk bore responsibility for gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, a decision that he argued had undermined decades of progress fighting diseases such as measles, H.I.V. and polio.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Times Magazine last week, Mr. Gates said that Mr. Musk had put the U.S.A.I.D. in “the wood chipper.”
He questioned whether Mr. Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, would uphold his commitment to what is known as the Giving Pledge — a nonbinding commitment to give away at least half of one’s wealth to charity — which Mr. Musk signed in 2012.
“He could go on to be a great philanthropist,” Mr. Gates told the magazine. “In the meantime, the world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children.”
His criticism was timed around an announcement by Mr. Gates that the Gates Foundation, which turned 25 on Thursday, would wind down its work over the next 20 years. He pledged to give an additional $200 billion to charity during that time, effectively spending down his personal fortune.
Mr. Gates used more scathing language in an interview published on Thursday by The Financial Times.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” he said.
Representatives for Mr. Musk and DOGE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Nor did the White House.
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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