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It says something about the current moment that Bill Gates seems like an outsider. (Accent on seems. But still.) Gates, who will soon turn seventy, has a personal fortune of more than a hundred billion dollars, making him one of the richest people on the planet. He lives in a fashion that would bring tears to the eyes of any sultan or king. A generation ago, his company, Microsoft, was seen as an avatar of not only innovation but antitrust violations. For his critics at that time, he was the epitome of ruthless corporate behavior. The glasses, the knitwear, and the restrained personality fooled no one. And yet he now somehow stands apart from the generation of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and other tech titans who have, without apology or hesitation, cast their lot with MAGA and Donald Trump.
Gates, for all his wealth, seems almost modest by comparison. (Again, accent on seems.) He is not taking up office space on the grounds of the White House, or wearing a big chain and a new hairdo. No discernible muscles bulge from his Shetland sweaters. Nearly all of his time, and much of the capital he has generated, is aimed toward philanthropy—public health, in particular. But, as he has acknowledged, his reputation has been tarnished of late by his divorce from his wife, Melinda French Gates, and some of the bad behavior that led to it, including a profoundly unwise relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein.
In a reflective mode, and perhaps in an attempt to create a flattering contrast with his younger, Trumpier rivals, Gates is publishing a memoir, “Source Code: My Beginnings,” a portrayal of his early years as a brilliant, awkward tech geek who did more than anyone to create the era of personal computing. Recently, I spoke with Gates for The New Yorker Radio Hour. He was, at times, cautious, especially when it came to politics and the younger cohort of tech billionaires, but his antipathies were not entirely concealed. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
At a certain point, it emerged that you donated tens of millions of dollars to the effort to elect Kamala Harris. Donald Trump won, and we are now witnessing many of your colleagues in the tech world at the highest level—Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos—flocking to Mar-a-Lago and wanting to be as close to power as possible. You’re smiling wryly, but what is the emerging picture here?
Well, President Trump was elected, and he is going to make a lot of policy decisions, and I would say the range of possibilities in many areas has never been as broad. I sought out President Trump and right after Christmas went down to Mar-a-Lago and actually had a really good, very long dinner with him. And—
What did you discuss?
Well, we talked about the world broadly, but my first request was on H.I.V., where there’s a question of whether the U.S. maintains the PEPFAR program that’s over twenty years standing, that keeps over ten million people alive with H.I.V. medicines. I explained to him why we should maintain that, and that I think we can innovate to eventually cure H.I.V. and the need for that, but that that’ll take some time to do, and encouraged him to look at the kind of things he’d done with Operation Warp Speed.
You’re talking about the COVID-19 vaccines.
Right. And see if those could be applied to this H.I.V.-cure work.
And how did he respond?
He was quite enthused about that. I talked about polio quite a bit, and how we need to have governments like Pakistan prioritize these campaigns, because we’ve never gotten rid of polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan. My foundation has the U.S. government—both for research and delivery in health—as a key partner, and I will do my best to work with this Administration. I got his ear for three hours. He couldn’t have been nicer. Doesn’t mean that other people won’t come in and say the H.I.V. money should be cut, but I did my best.
Do you worry that you might be in some way punished by being on the Democratic side in the election this last time around? It’s not beyond Donald Trump, history shows, for him to favor his allies and punish what he sees as his enemies.
No, you can definitely worry that there’ve been sort of broad attacks on foundations, and, O.K., some of them are a bit “woke,” but over all I think they serve a valuable purpose. There’s been a broad attack on vaccines.
Well, let’s take that. What are your biggest concerns regarding vaccines on a global level when you’ve got the Administration that you’ve got now, and the influence of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in office?
I still think people will come to their senses on this one. The key reason why we went from ten million children dying every year at the turn of the century to less than five million today is because we got new, very inexpensive vaccines out to most of the world’s children. Five million deaths a year—that’s a big thing, and, in fact, if we stay serious about global health, we could cut those deaths in half again.
But do you see an impulse, either at your three-hour dinner with the President or whatever contact you’ve had with the returning Administration—do you have confidence in them where that’s concerned?
Well, I said to him that he’d done a very good job on Warp Speed, which accelerated the availability of the COVID vaccine, and I encouraged him to be more public about that, or said that was a worthy thing. And we talked about why the pandemic kind of drove people apart and the fact that we’re less ready for a pandemic today. You would’ve thought that, at least for a while, we’d get serious about it. . . . So, I’m a bit surprised. But, because millions of lives are involved, I do think the whole vaccine thing—people will remember that this is a miraculous invention.
There’s a lot of talk now about oligarchic structures in the United States—far more than before. Is there an oligarchy growing in Washington?
I can’t relate to that term. I think of it more in terms of Russia, actually. And, weirdly—
Why is that, though?
We can’t say that money was the key to this election. The party that spent—I think it’s widely accepted—the party who spent less money won the election.
I’m talking about something else. I’m talking about the influence that somebody like Elon Musk will exert. I’m talking about the way Mark Zuckerberg has been behaving of late. I’m talking about the influence on media barons, like—well, one of his interests is Jeff Bezos, and his reversals when it comes to the Washington Post. Does that not concern you?
The balance between following the new theme that the voters have chosen versus sticking up for enduring principles. [Laughs.] I do think we can look at this behavior and say, O.K., which is this? And maybe have they gone too far? Trump will be making a lot of very key decisions, and the idea that people in the Gates Foundation will be trying to help them make those decisions well—that part I’ll have to stick up for. We are not going into opposition. We are continuing the partnership we’ve had with every Administration.
Vaccine development has been a gigantic focus of the foundation’s work, and, as a result, you’ve become the subject of a boatload of conspiracy theories, especially around COVID. One of the most amazing of these conspiracy theories was that you wanted to use a COVID-19 vaccine to implant—wait for it—microchips in people. Where does this come from? How do you explain vaccine skepticism, and where do you lay the blame for the way these theories and attacks come at you and whoever else believes in that vaccine?
