Elon Musk has hit back at Bill Gates’s claim that his cuts to the U.S. foreign aid budget will kill millions of children.
“Who does Bill Gates think he is to make comments about the welfare of children, given that he has frequented Jeffrey Epstein?” the Tesla (TSLA) CEO said Tuesday, during an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha. “I’d like him to show us any evidence,” Musk added.
The rebuttal follows an interview the Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder gave to the Financial Times earlier in May. “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates said.
In February the Trump administration kicked off sweeping cuts to foreign aid, overseen by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die,” Musk wrote on X as the dismantling began.
The government eliminated more than 90% of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) overseas aid contracts and cut $60 billion in overall U.S. assistance around the world. This saw funding to the The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAID), effectively freeze.
“I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” Gates told the FT.
When asked about UNAID, Musk insisted “the AIDS medication program is continuing.”
Musk’s comments refer to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which received a limited waiver on February 1, allowing it to continue for certain “life-saving” antiretroviral treatments. This includes HIV-positive individuals, prevention of mother-to-child transmission, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for pregnant and breastfeeding women, and HIV testing.
However, PrEP for anyone else — including patients already on the drug — and HIV prevention more generally, such as programming for orphans and vulnerable children, are not included. Crucially, there have been no indications that the planned purchase of lenacapavir, a new “breakthrough” antiretroviral, will continue. Lenacapavir prevents sexual transmission of HIV with 100 percent efficacy, while only requiring an injection every six months. PEPFAR had committed to purchasing two million of those doses over the next three years.
In a February statement following the waiver, UNAID reported that rolling back PEPFAR meant that medication for both HIV prevention and treatment had been significantly disrupted. Treatment has been “grinding to a halt” in certain places.
Due to the USAID cuts, “the number of deaths will start going up for the first time … it’s going to be millions more deaths because of the resources,” Gates told Reuters. U.S. government aid accounts for around 73% of donor funding for HIV worldwide.
It’s thought that freezing and discontinuing funding to PEPFAR since January 24 may have already led to more than 4,800 child deaths.
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