Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates says he is a “little disappointed” by Elon Musk’s efforts to shutter the United States’ global aid agency.
The billionaire Microsoft founder turned global philanthropist—who just days ago said Musk has “been nice to me at times, and mean to me at times“—appeared on CNN in an interview with Anderson Cooper Tuesday in which he criticised some of Musk’s actions to cut federal spending as part of the Trump administration.
Notably, Gates defended the U.S. Agency for International Aid (USAID), a key federal program that Musk announced was being shuttered this week as part of his efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
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Gates said the agency had helped save millions of lives and served a valuable strategic purpose for the United States in Africa and other parts of the world. Most notably he warned that up to 10 million people could die if global AIDS funding through the PEPFAR program was abruptly cut off.
Gates said he was open to “some degree of tuning, but having all those people not come in to work and characterizing the whole thing in a negative way, I’m a little disappointed in that.”
Gates said the idea of Musk supporting right-wing parties in Europe was “surprising,” though he gave him credit as a “super-smart” man.
“I’m surprised the number of things he states opinions on, I’ve always had friends around me who make sure I don’t spout off on too many things all at the same time.”
The 69-year-old said he didn’t feel it problematic to review federal departments, “but going in very quickly and saying that all these people run a criminal organization, that’s not as subtle as you’d like to see.”
Musk announced the agency was getting the chop in a DOGE Spaces debut on X.
“As we dug into USAID it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. If you have an apple with a worm in it, you can take the worm out. If you have a whole ball of worms, it’s hopeless,” he said. “USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple... that is why it’s gotta go. It’s beyond repair.”
