Elon Musk clapped back at Bill Gates when asked about his criticism of the Department of Government Efficiency.
In response to Gates’ remarks to CNN and other publications earlier this month that DOGE’s slashes to the US Agency for International Development would lead to “millions of deaths,” Musk asked his fellow tech billionaire to show proof.
“I’d like him to show us any evidence whatsoever that this is true. It’s false,” Musk told Bloomberg’s Mishal Husain onstage at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday.
With Musk as its de facto leader, DOGE has taken an aggressive approach to making the government more efficient — including cutting over 80% of USAID’s programs, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. DOGE was effectively “feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” as the Tesla CEO put it in an X post on February 2.
Musk told Husain that parts of USAID “that were found to be even slightly useful” were preserved and moved to the State Department. On January 28, Rubio announced that the US would issue a waiver allowing “life-saving humanitarian assistance programs” to continue their work.
Musk previously called USAID a “criminal organization,” and he said Tuesday that it hasn’t been able to provide evidence of the children it’s helping.
“‘Like, where are they? If they’re in trouble, we’d like to talk to them and talk to their caregivers,'” Musk said.
Neither Musk nor representatives for Gates immediately responded to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Gates, the cofounder of Microsoft, committed his over $100 billion fortune and the resources of the Gates Foundation to aid in global health over the next 20 years. He told CNN that DOGE’s bold approach to cutting government spending is “a mistake.”
USAID distributed nearly $32.5 billion in aid in 2024, devoting over $2.3 billion to fighting AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis around the world. It also spent about $290 million on making vaccines and immunization more widespread.
According to the United Nations, the US funds 70% of the global response to HIV/AIDS, saving more than 26 million lives since the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was created in 2003.
“He’s the one who cut the USAID budget. He put it in the wood chipper,” Gates told The New York Times Magazine of Musk. “The world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children.”
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