Tech Won't Save Us - Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein w/ Tim Schwab

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

Paris Marx is joined by Tim Schwab to discuss the evolving story of Bill Gates and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, as well as the issues that arise from allowing billionaires to use philanthropy to push personal political agendas and launder their reputations. Tim Schwab is the author of The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire. Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon. The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Also mentioned in this episode: Tim wrote about why Bill Gates should be removed from the foundation over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Here is the interview Melinda French Gates did with NPR Here is the Wall Street Journal article covering Bill Gates apology to Gates Foundation staff for his relationship with Epstein

This is what often gets missed in the Gates Foundation story. It's just that we've been so inundated with these hero stories, lionizing his great giving and the millions of lives he saved. But if you actually take any time to look at the Gates Foundation's work, in many places you'll see it's actually doing more harm than good. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with the Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Tim Schwab. Tim is the author of the Bill Gates problem, reckoning with the myth of the good billion.

and also writes a newsletter. A couple pieces from there will be listed in the show notes based around what Tim has been writing. Now, before we get into talking about this episode, I just want to say, I'm sure that some of you will be expecting a comment on the United States and Israel's most recent bombings in Iran. And obviously, I think that this is ridiculous and just further cements the point that the United States is a rogue actor and that we really need to be getting off of its tech products, its tech companies, and just Iceland. more generally so that it can't keep doing these sorts of things. I really don't have a lot more to add. I would direct you back to the episode that I recorded for January 15th called reimagining

our relationship with digital tech, where I gave my thoughts more broadly about the world that we're seeing at the moment and how we should be responding to it and why the United States actions and violations of international law should be propelling us to do something very different as quickly as possible. Speaking of the United States and it's dark underbelly, this week we're also starting to talk about the Epstein Files. So here is how my plan around this is going to work out. I think we're going to do two episodes on the Epstein files. This one with Tim Schwab is digging into Bill Gates, you know, his relationship with

Jeffrey Epstein, the way that he has tried to obscure that relationship over many years, and what the most recent revelations tell us about the relationship that Bill Gates had to this notorious pedophile and ultimately why he should be held to account for that relationship and certainly for trying to mislead us about what that relationship was and really continues to try to do that though he has become more open about it recently but we're also going to do an episode looking at ela musk's relationship to Jeffrey Epstein and what the files tell us about that relationship over the course of many years but I feel like we need a little break in between those two two discussions. So while this week we're discussing Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Gates, next week

I'll be having an episode with Gita Jackson, where we go into talking about the left's relationship to technology, these recent pieces that maybe you've heard about where AI boosters are talking about how the left hates AI and is being left behind and actually the right is basically ahead on this or taking the right approach to AI, we are tearing that apart. We're talking about what it actually means to like technology from a left perspective and how the technologies that we're interested in are very different from those being pushed by some of the largest companies in the world that of course continue to make our life worse. So then after that kind of palette cleanser, we will go back to talking about Jeffrey Epstein and Elon Musk the following week to get into his

sorted relationship with this terrible man. And of course, when I say terrible man, I could really be referring to either of them. So that is the plan. I hope that makes sense to you. I think it provides us with a good balance of digging into Jeffrey Epstein, his relationships to some of the key figures in the tech industry, but also not doing so over so many episodes who are really just being dragged down by all of this. My key takeaway from everything, you know, from these discussions is really that we have this network of elite people.

The Epstein Files is giving us incredible insight into how that works and how it's not just about wealth and influence and power, but also obviously about how Jeffrey Epstein procured young girls to try to use to gain that influence with these people. And what we need more than anything right now is accountability for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and to make sure that the people who victimized these girls, but also held these relationships with Jeffrey Epstein and did all these other number of things that were illegal in their dealings with him, that those people need to be held to account for everything they have done and should not be let off with this,

which means we need to see all of those files, and we need to see authorities in every country going after the people who were named as credibly doing crimes within them. So with that said, I hope that, it feels weird to say, I hope that you enjoy this episode, to be quite honest, because it's discussing such a terrible thing. But I guess I hope that you get more insight into Bill Gates' relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and why he certainly needs to be removed from the foundation that bears his name and should have never had his reputation rehabilitated from his

vast philanthropic spending. Of course, he does this in response to the fact that his reputation was shredded after the monopoly trial around the turn of the new millennium. So if you learn from this episode, make sure to leave a five-star review. on your podcast platform of choice. You can also share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work,

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talking about some more positive things and more uplifting things, you can join supporters like Dave from Sunnyvale, California, and M in San Frugence, Quebec, by going to Patreon.com slash Tech Won't Save Us where you can become a supporter.

as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Tim, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. Thanks for having me, Paris. Absolutely. It's always fantastic to talk to you. And unfortunately, Bill Gates is in the news for the worst possible reason. So you're the natural person to come on and talk to us about it. But before we get in the Gates specifically, you know, obviously we're talking about the Epstein files here. And I just wonder what your kind of initial reaction was as these files were released to really see the breadth and the scope of kind of the network that Jeffrey Epstein had put together,

Bill Gates obviously being an important component of that, but just how broad that was. So, yeah, just what are your initial reactions on seeing, you know, how this is playing out? To me, I think that the real lesson we should take from the Epstein files concerns the perils of extreme wealth, in that when we allow people to become this wealthy, they really operate on a different level. they operate as though the rules don't apply to them. And in many practical respects, that's true. The rules don't apply to them. So I think, you know, there are a lot of conversations about the way extreme wealth can hurt our economy or hurt our society. But what I think you're also seeing is the way it hurts our humanity. So much of what the Epstein files and what Jeffrey Epstein was doing was organized

around philanthropy and supposedly humanitarianism. But of course, we can all now see very clearly that that was just a ruse to really, for other things he was trying to do in his life, it really boils down to the way we have different categories of classes of people. Absolutely. I think that's very well said, and I think it shows it very clearly, right? You kind of see this network of elite people associated with Epstein, some of them because of pedophilic, you know, intentions and, you know, trying to seek out these girls that Jeffrey Epstein had, been in others just trying to get close to the power and the wealth and the influence that this kind of network cultivated, right?

And so related to that, I guess, we have been hearing a ton about Bill Gates and his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein for quite some time. Obviously, this is back in the spotlight as a result of this recent kind of set of files that has been released by the U.S. Justice Department. But I was wondering, before we talk about these recent revelations, I think it's probably good to kind of put in context what we know about the relationship between Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein. So when did we, as kind of like a broader public, start to find out about the relationship that Bill Gates had to this pedophile that is now kind of notorious? When did that start to be revealed? And what do we know about the relationship that Gates had with him? This goes all the way back to Epstein's most recent arrest in 2019.

That summer, the New Yorker published an investigation showing that Epstein seemed to be involved in a donation that Bill Gates had made to MIT. And from there, the sort of story evolved and built up. Initially, Gates had a, you know, he had a PR strategy just to deny or downplay everything. But in one of the most spirited looks ever of investigative journalists into Bill Gates, like the tabloid sensationalistic quality, the sex-cells quality of the Epstein Gates Affair, it really propelled major news outlets, the kind of news outlets that don't normally put a critical lens to Gates, almost never put a critical lens to the Gates Foundation.

they really went all in on the Gates-Ebstein story. And what came out of that was a really evolving account from Bill Gates as these inconsistencies and contradictions came to light. He was insisting that their relationship was entirely professional in nature. It only involved men, and it was organized around this noble and righteous goal to raise money for philanthropy. And that it is true that that was part of their relationship. I just don't think it's the entire thing. So Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein, working with J.P. Morgan Chase, had a plan to try and solicit new donations, new philanthropic dollars from the billionaire class. And they were going to put this into this new financial vehicle called the donor advised fund. And, you know, this would be a great benefit to the billionaire class because it would show them following Bill Gates' his footstep becoming philanthropist, giving away their money. And it would also, Bill Gates, I think, hoped it would drive new money and new energy to his footstep.

his own philanthropic project and his own philanthropic legacy. So that was a basis of their meetings, but I think that there are certainly reasons to examine other possible dimensions of the Gates and Epstein affair. We can talk about that if you want. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll definitely dig into that. But I'm wondering, like, I think you've given us a good insight into what this relationship isn't, and certainly how Bill Gates described it once it was revealed. But when did, like, do we know when Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein really started to like meet one another, like when they actually came into contact? Yeah, so as far as we know, their first meeting was in 2011, and this was after Jeffrey Epstein was already a convicted sex felon for a crime involving a minor, after he was a registered

sex offender, after news of this crime had been very widely published, and after the news media continued to publish new allegations, ongoing allegations about Jeffrey Epstein. So he was a very, perhaps the best known sex offender in the United States. It's inconceivable that Bill Gates and his staff at the Gates Foundation, who were also meeting with Epstein, didn't know this background, didn't know who Epstein was. So Gates met personally with Epstein in 2011 and then continued to meet a number of times over the next several years. Bill Gates has always refused to say how many times he's met with Epstein, which is like a huge red flag, you know, that he would not openly address that question. In a meeting of this week, the Epstein files has become this bigger and bigger

story and the Gates Foundation goes into damage control mode. Bill Gates addressed his staff and provided some new details about his relationship with Epstein. He said that he's met with him in Washington, in New York, in France, in Germany. So I think his effort recently was to try to calm the outrage among staff surrounding his decision to marry up his philanthropic foundation with someone like Jeffrey Epstein. But in the process of trying to explain that relationship, he's showing us, you know, even greater scope of the relationship, which is troubling. So there are still a lot of open questions we have, and we may never know the full truth. But the position that I started arguing this week is that, you know, Bill Gates really needs to step down. He needs to be removed

from the foundation. It's just incompatible for this 86 billion dollar private foundation that spends billions of dollars on a portfolio of work to empower women and girls. You know, it's just incompatible. Bill Gates should be disqualified for leading an organization just doing that kind of work. Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense to make that argument, right?

And I want to circle back to it in our conversation. I'm wondering, you know, a bit more about those meetings. You know, it seems interesting or even odd to me that the venue he finally takes to, like, admit that there was a bit more to these meetings is kind of like a town hall or whatnot with employees of the Gates Foundation.

You know, after all this time of, trying to obscure what actually happened there and, you know, the nature of these meetings. Obviously, Gates has tried to present these as more work-focused meetings, as you were saying before, you know, around getting philanthropic dollars and things like that. Is that an accurate reflection of what those meetings were? And was it really just, you know, business people who were attending these meetings, as far as we know? No, I don't think that that really reflects the reality of what was happening. A lot of times these meetings actually seemed a lot more.

like dinner parties. You know, after Gates said that he was meeting with men and young and attractive women weren't present, we find out, oh, there actually were young and attractive women present. Part of what's come out of the Epstein files are pictures of Bill Gates posing with young women whose faces have been redacted. And that follows a news report from a couple years ago that Jeffrey Epstein had a habit of bringing young models to his meetings with Bill Gates. Bill Gates apparently had a habit of taking pictures with them. And these are young women who later came out and said that they were being abused by Epstein. So, you know, Gates, Gates' account has really evolved as more and more information has come out and as he's had

to respond to the inconsistencies. He has always maintained that he didn't engage in any kind of illicit activities, wasn't involved with any of the victims of Epstein, wasn't involved with women in any kind of personal relationship through Epstein. So his position is really denying and downplaying. I think to your question of why is he now addressing the Founder, Foundation staff, I think it's because you really get into a point of crisis with the legitimacy of his leadership and the legitimacy of the Gates Foundation mission itself, if not also its nonprofit status. You know, the scandal is growing to such an extent now. There are so many eyes on the foundation, the contradictions between its supposedly charitable mission around equity

and lifting people up and women and children. You know, it is so thoroughly at loggerheads with with Bill Gates' behavior, with the Gates Foundation's behavior in terms of this institutional decision to pursue a collaboration with Jeffrey Epstein, to decide for years to meet with him and discuss like working together on philanthropy. You know, I've been surprised that there haven't been public resignations from the Gates Foundation, but I'm certain, I'm talking to people inside the Foundation, that morale is cratering. I think you are going to see probably a lot of people resigning or moving towards resignation. So, yeah, I think it's a real crisis at crisis levels for both Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation.

And I think this is as close as we've ever come to accountability for Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation. And I think what you say is not surprising, right? Like, obviously there'll be this kind of high-ranking tier of people who are close to Gates, you know, who have probably been working for years to help kind of massage his reputation and we can get into how his philanthropy has helped to do that over many years. But below that, there will be just a lot of people who work at the foundation who care about the mission and the goals that it has kind of stated is important to it over the years. And they're trying to help address problems in different parts of the world, address health crises, all this kind of thing, right? Like, that is their motivation and being wrapped up in what Bill Gates himself has done and what it's being revealed that he was associated with is obviously something that is very far from their ethics, their morals, and what they're hoping.

to do by working for an organization like this. So I think that makes complete sense, right? Yeah, I mean, a few weeks ago, they had a different town hall with their CEO, and it just became, Epstein came up, and the whole session became like a venting session for staff who were really trying to sort through this contradiction between Bill Gates' behavior, between Jeffrey Epstein, and between the foundation's credibility and legitimacy and its supposed admission. So this has been brewing for weeks now, and yeah, I don't know how it's, going to end up. I've learned you cannot underestimate Bill Gates. He has so much power. He has so much money. He can pull so many levers. And of course, the most important lever he can pull is

giving away money. This has been a real difficulty and accountability for Gates forever, is that so many would-be watchdogs, would-be critics, are reluctant to speak up or speak out for fear of losing his patronage. Either they're taking money from Gates right now or they hope to in the future. And you're talking about tens of billions of dollars that are going to universities, to think tanks, to advocacy groups, to journalism news outlets. You know, I would not underestimate Gates and his ability to sort of find his way out of this crisis. You know, again, these are allegations that he's been dealing with since 2019. We are on year six of this saga.

And, you know, it's not getting better for him, but he keeps, I don't know, he has some, like, Teflon ability. He just keeps finding his way out of accountability as so. many of his peers, so many other global elites are either being forced out of public life or professional positions, or at least they're facing demands to be removed. Which is really well said, and which your book gets into in extensive detail and is so good at chronicling. Before we get into like the bigger picture, I wanted to ask a bit more, like, is there anything else that we should know about how Bill Gates has responded to these

allegations, you know, before the most recent revelations with the Epstein files, that is worth considering in light of the growing scandal that you have been talking about, like other ways that he has tried to obscure the relationship that he had with Hepstein, clearly. Pretty consistently, he's tried to downplay and deny. He's, including recently, he uses this claim of ignorance, which is what all of these powerful figures are saying. He said, like, well, I spent time with him, but I didn't realize. I didn't know he was a predator.

I didn't know he was a pedophile. I didn't know he was abusing women. I was ignorant, you know, and I apologize for that. At times Gates, and this is, he's unfortunately been held by some members of the news media, he's been presented himself and been presented as like a dupe, not just a dupe, but a victim himself, that he was victimized by Epstein, that he was tricked into sharing his philanthropic halo with this sexual predator, that he had this righteous and noble goal to raise money and he thought Epstein was going to help him do that because Epstein had all these connections to rich people and

that he tricked him. And, you know, when you think about the actual victims of Epstein, you know, the hundreds or, you know, who knows how many women and girls who were victimized by Epstein, it's just really outrageous for someone like Bill Gates to put forward that kind of, to even suggest that in some way that he was a victim of what happened with Epstein. Yeah, but, I mean, just as a very top level, again, to be very clear so nobody could suit, as Bill Gates has always denied that there was anything illicit happening, any illicit activities, or that he was involved with Epstein's victims in any way. Hearing you say that Bill Gates has positioned himself as one of the victims here is just

like so disgusting to hear, especially when you're thinking about like what the actual victims of Epstein's crimes and the crimes of many of the people in his network, you know, really experienced, right? To say like, oh, poor Bill Gates was misled supposedly by, by Jeffrey Epstein. It's just like it turns your stomach to see him try to present himself as, you know, one of the people who was harmed by Epstein when it's like, dude, come on, give me a break. Yeah. I mean, you see this a lot, this idea that, I mean, you see this in the media also,

is that Epstein was this genius sociopath con man who tricked everyone. And I feel like, you know, that's not really a fair narrative, you know, because someone like Bill Gates, you didn't just trick Bill Gates. You trick like everyone around Bill Gates. It was like all of these people, a high-level people at the Gates Foundation who also they should have been doing their due diligence and vetting. And we're also saying, okay, it's okay for us and the foundation to meet with Jeffrey Epstein. And of course, beyond Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, it's so many other people.

You have Bill Gates saying, oh, he was misled. He didn't realize this about Epstein. But Melinda French Gates has spoken about her experience meeting Jeffrey Epstein and has said that, you know, she met him just once because Bill was having these meetings with him and was talking about kind of doing stuff with the foundation with Epstein. and she described him as abhorrent, evil personified, that she had nightmares about meeting him afterwards. And, you know, other people have spoken about how when they met Epstein, it was, they felt it was pretty clear that there was something off about this guy, like, right away. So it feels like that kind of explanation from Gates really doesn't add up, right?

Right, absolutely. I mean, his now ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, she wanted to, she has told this story since she divorced her husband, but she's come out. and said that she wanted to meet Epstein, and she immediately knew that he was evil personified. She told Bill Gates, this is a bad idea. We need to end this relationship. And Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation continued to meet with Epstein. So, yeah, to your point, it really just does not add up, given that he was, his wife was telling him, he's a bad guy, given that he's a registered sex offender, given that he's a felony sex conviction involving a minor, given that he's bringing young models to his meetings with Bill Gates does not add up that he did not see these

red flags and didn't know what he was doing. He either knew or should have known. And if he didn't know or didn't have the capability to know, either way, I think it's clearly time for some serious accountability. I think that makes perfect sense, right? I think that there's not a lot of credibility when you're thinking about what Bill Gates is actually saying here. And I feel like one more piece of this, before talking about the history and what we know about that, that is worth discussing before we get on to what has been revealed more recently is about Gates' own history with women, you know, which has been reported on in the past number of years at Microsoft and the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation where, again, there are, you know, some big questions about how he has

treated women who have worked under him and has sought to pursue them, especially in light of thinking about these revelations of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, right? Yeah, and this is what makes Gates' explanation about his relationship with Epstein particularly suspect is that independent of Epstein, Bill Gates now faces a number of allegations about misconduct towards women, towards female subordinates of his at Microsoft and the Gates Foundation. People have lost track of this, but Melinda French Gates, his ex-wife, she was his employee at Microsoft and he pursued her. It seems very clear by the number of allegations that she was not the only one. At the same time, a former board member of Microsoft has come

out about her tenure on the board of directors of Microsoft, you know, very serious position and very high-powered company and talked about just the kind of seething misogyny that Bill Gates would display at board meetings. You know, they were looking, I think Microsoft was looking for a new CEO, and she said, we should look at consider hiring a woman. And Bill Gates said, are you effing trying to destroy my company? I interviewed her a few years ago for my book, and what she said was that, you know, part of the reason she felt that she'd been hired or engaged to be a director at Microsoft was to show the world that Microsoft was open to women, to female perspectives, because it kind of had its toxic male reputation. But she said in these meetings

with Bill Gates, anytime you try to suggest anything related to that, he would shut it down. So, I mean, this really gets to, you know, it's more than, there's something, the name of the chapter in my book is women, because I think it is something, there's some kind of toxic dynamic there between Bill Gates and women, the way he treats women, the way he disrespects women. I think that maybe his pursuit of subordinates at his workplace is also part and parcel of that. I think you could throw Epstein into that also. It just certainly is part of the same conversation. Yeah, I think one more piece I wanted to add to that, just to kind of reinforce, again, the points that you're making, is in, you know, one of the stories of yours that I read, there's the reporting on, you know, Bill Gates' alleged affair with Mila Antonova, a Russian bridge player.

and you kind of wrote about how, you know, it's not just that Bill Gates allegedly had an affair with this bridge player, but also directed her, a young woman at the time, to Epstein to try to get money for her company or something like that. Can you talk a bit about that? And again, this is at a point when Jeffrey Epstein has been convicted. He is a known sex offender. Can you talk a bit about what was going on there? Yeah, so this is reporting from the Wall Street Journal a few years ago that, you know, Bill Gates, he likes to play bridge the card game and he was at a bridge tournament.

he met a young woman, probably over 18, but maybe half, one-third of his age, and he has an affair with her. The affair ends, and one of Bill Gates' like deputies, his right-hand man, a guy named Boris Nikolik, introduces her to Jeffrey Epstein. And the way the Wall Street Journal wrote this article, again, it kind of presents Bill Gates as a victim, is that Epstein used knowledge of Bill Gates' affair with this woman to try to blackmail him. You know, that may be true, but I think It is, I don't think it's fair at all to present Bill Gates as a victim. But, you know, what I was disappointed with the Wall Street Journal's coverage and the way I've tried to recover that story is that in what world would it make sense for Bill Gates' top

deputy to introduce this young woman who Bill Gates just had an affair with to Jeffrey Epstein, this registered sex offender? I mean, there's just so much wrong on every single level that the more you peel back the layers of the onions of these stories, the more macabre they sort of become, the more unseemly at all is, and the more difficult it is to place any of this activity under the common definition of charity. I mean, this idea of Bill Gates being a philanthropist, Jeffrey Epstein is by no means the only scandal or controversy at the Gates Foundation, the only time or place where the foundation's activities are impossible to place under the common definition of charity. But it is the

most sort of, the Epstein story is the sort of most visceral example of this. It's like this private scandals, bring down public figures, because it has sex, because it has this sensationalized quality, that regrettably is going to be our entry point into bringing accountability for Gates. But I do hope that as this process of accountability continues, that it does open up into a much bigger conversation about billionaire power, about, you know, we never should have let someone like Bill Gates becomes so rich in the first place. We never should have let him create such a politically powerful private foundation. the 86 billion-dollar Gates Foundation, which today is touching the lives of billions of people

around the globe. It's shaping how they feed and educate and Medicaid children. You know, the level of influence that political influence that the foundation has on public policy, it's undemocratic and it's oligarchic. So, you know, that's my big hope is that Epstein is just hopes open the door to a bigger conversation about billionaires and billionaire philanthropy. And I want to get to that philanthropy point, but first I do want to talk about what we have learned from this recent set of revelations, right? That has really put this relationship between Gates and Epstein back into the news, like back into the public conversation. And of course, you know, that deputy who you mentioned, I believe also has a, you know, a whole load of connections to Epstein. You know, again, one of these people who's close to Gates and then close to Epstein as a result.

So with these Epstein file revelations, what new did we learn about the relationship between. Gates and Epstein, that again, is causing this to become such a big issue, such a big scandal once again for Gates and for the foundation. Probably the most scandalous file to be released from the Epstein file was a series of emails that Epstein sent to himself. It looks like he was working on drafts of an email. And he was doing this on behalf of what sounds like a disgruntled employee who was being forced out of Gates' orbit, who was trying to either get his job back or get some kind of compensation for being forced out. And the emails talk about, they make all kinds of allegations.

Allegations about Gates having sex with Russian girls, Gates contracting an STD, trying to get antibiotics for the STD that he could surreptitiously give to Melinda Gates, his then wife. You know, it's really a really incredible set of allegations that Bill Gates immediately denied as saying that, you know, the email was never sent to me. It's not true. It's absurd. It's false. It is hard to say. Did Jeffrey Epstein on behalf of a disgruntled employee of the Gates Foundation or somewhere else who worked for Gates, did he just invent all of these very specific details in a threat letter to try and threaten or blackmail Bill Gates to say this is what I'm capable of? Or was there actually some truth to some of these allegations?

Time will tell, I guess, for right now all we have is Bill Gates is denial. But I think that really needs to be seen in light of the context of his history of his historical account of his relationship with Epstein, which is marked by inconsistencies and omissions and has evolved significantly. I mean, a number of different files have come out, but it contributes to the picture we get that Gates was closer to Epstein than he would have liked to admit, and that there was, you know, there was discussion of sex, whether that discussion was completely false or fraudulent. It seemed like sex was a topic that played into the Gates and Epstein dynamic in some way. I'm not saying that there are any victims of Gates or anything like

that. I'm just saying if you look in the Epstein files and how Gates is in there, sex is part of that conversation. Am I right that Gates has since admitted to some of those affairs? Is that correct? So in his sort of town hall that he gave with staff this week, Bill Gates, I didn't get a full recording of it. So part of what I'm basing this on is the Wall Street Journal is reporting because they did have a full recording. It sounded like Gates admitted to his staff that he had had affairs with two Russian women that he met outside of Epstein and that he, Epstein found out about these affairs and tried to use him to blackmail him. So, you know, there is some overlap with some of what's in the Epstein file, some of the allegations against him that he has previously

said are fraudulent and absurd. I reached out to the Gates Foundation for clarification, and they're not going to respond to me, I'm sure they haven't yet. I just don't know how the story is going to evolve because it's like every time new information comes out, it seems to me like Gates accounts sort of changes. I really don't think that at this point we have the full details of the relationship. I don't know that we ever will. Jeffrey Epstein, as I'm sure everybody knows is dead. So, I mean, for right now, I'm spent a lot of time going to the Epstein files and you're talking about millions of documents and you're talking about, you know, we mentioned Bill Gates's former right-hand man Boris Nicolik. He's like, if you search for his name, there's like 15,000 documents involving him.

So it's going to be a while before we can go through these. In the background of all this, people are saying how, you know, files are being taken down or being re-redacted. So it's sort of like a race to try and put this whole puzzle together and to get as close to the truth as we can. And as you say, Bill Gates is not being very forthcoming with. that truth. It's just every new revelation is forcing him. It seems to reveal a little bit more each time, right? Yeah, I mean, if you're completely innocent, you know, why wouldn't you from the very beginning say, if you're asked by places like the New York Times, how many times did you meet with him, let's talk? Why wouldn't you itemize? Just provide a full list. You know, Bill Gates is

one of the most highly scheduled people in the world. It would not be difficult for him or his many staff to go through and find all the meetings and to just be very clear and open and transparent about what his relationship was with Epstein. So the fact that he hasn't, I think that that is a major right flag. Absolutely. And also to say that women weren't involved and then these images emerge where he's clearly with women. And that was not true, right? That there are multiple, as you've been saying, there are multiple instances where he said one thing and another thing, you know, seem to be the reality. In light of what you were saying they were about these recent revelations and, you know, how we can only know so much. I wonder what you have made of his

ex-wife, Melinda French Gates's response, because she has given a new interview recently where she has, you know, given a bit of commentary on this. And, you know, obviously it doesn't really reflect on her, but it kind of adds to what we can think about Bill Gates in relation to what he has been saying, I think. Yeah. So Melinda Gates went on NPR and was asked about the email that I mentioned before about the Epstein files. There's an allegation that Bill Gates got with having sex with Russian women, got an STD, tried to secure antibiotics. They could surreptitiously give to Melinda Gates. And she was asked about this, and she didn't respond to the particulars, didn't respond to the detail. She just said it filled her. These stories filled her with extreme

sadness. I mean, to me, it was her throwing Bill Gates under the bus and saying, you're on your own on this one. You know, her position was really this, she described it as the muck surrounding Epstein and said that men who associated with him, including her ex-husband, need to be made to answer for this. So I think that was especially damning. She wasn't there defending her husband. She wasn't defending against these allegations. She didn't confirm them, but she didn't deny them either. So that is a real, I think, black mark against Gates. Although, you know, just for context, I would say that a lot of the entirety of the Gates Foundation's years-long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein happened while Melinda French Gates was co-chair of the foundation.

So, you know, it's something I'm thinking more about. I know she's on record saying she told Bill Gates to stop the relationship, but at the point that you're the co-chair and you're supposedly an equal of Bill Gates and you've built the entire foundation's brand around the quality that Bill and Melinda have running this, you should have the power to really shut this down, if not also, you should also have the responsibility. You have the duty when you see the foundation acting in such an obviously uncharitable manner, partnering with Jeffrey Epstein on philanthropy. I mean, there's a point where I think it raises the question about Melinda French Gates

and whether she has some questions to answer also. I think that's fair, right? I think it's fair to say, listen, what Bill Gates was up to with Jeffrey Epstein does not reflect on Melinda French Gates. That is something that he did. But in terms of her position at the foundation and the amount of time that the foundation was talking to Epstein about potentially doing things with him, that is somewhere where there are questions, I think, for her to answer in terms of the relationship that the foundation

had to Epstein and why she didn't step in to do more. Or if she did try to, what was preventing her from making sure that relationship was severed, right? Yeah, it's not like, I don't want to blame Alinda French Gates and saying, you know, it's her fault in any way. I do think, I mean, the way I wrote the book is that while at the time I wrote the book, it was called the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation because they were still running it together. While, you know, her name is there. She supposedly isn't equal of Bill and a co-chair. It was always his foundation, which she ran with an iron fist. So I don't think that they ever really

were equals. But I guess it would just be helpful, I think, if she could say more because she did have, I mean, arguably she had like a duty or responsibility, even possibly in legal terms, in terms of what the foundation was doing on her watch. So I just feel like I think she should be part of the conversation. I think it's a fair point to make, right? And again, not that she holds any responsibility in relation to what Bill Gates' relationship to Epstein, but really around the foundation. I did want to talk about that broader philanthropy piece, though, right?

Because obviously your book and a lot of the discussions that we've had center around how Bill Gates has effectively used his philanthropy and the Gates Foundation itself to rehabilitate his image over time, especially going back to the late 90s, early 2000s, and the Microsoft antitrust trial and how he came out looking from that and how the foundation is really founded basically as a response to how terrible he looks in that moment. And so his kind of history provides this example of how very wealthy people can use philanthropy in order to change their images and their reputations. And you've written about how it seems that Epstein was using philanthropy in a not dissimilar way, right, to kind of launder his reputation and how this

relationship with Gates actually helped with that. So I wonder if you could discuss that a bit further. Yeah, so Jeffrey Epstein was a financier. He was a really rich guy, not as rich as Gates, but I think when he died, his estate was worth like half a billion dollars. So he had a lot of money. And that was an essential part after his felony sex crime conviction. That was an essential part of his effort to rehabilitate his image was through philanthropy. And I think we've seen, he developed very close financial relationships with universities, working on like science and technology. And what this did was it helped reintroduce him into polite society by being part of this elite philanthropist club where he's funding all these important institutions

in by association. He gets like the halo effect from, I think it was Harvard and MIT, and then eventually he's partnering with the Gates Foundation. And so he can mention the work he's doing with these institutions to anyone whenever it's convenient to show like, look, I'm hanging out with Bill Gates. I'm hanging out with the Gates Foundation. And there's even examples of this in the media that have come up where people are saying, you know, they're considering working with Epstein five, ten years ago. And they say, well, if Bill Gates is going to work with him, why can't I?

So it has a very powerful normalizing effect for Bill Gates to associate him. himself with Jeffrey Epstein. But I do think, to your point, that Jeffrey Epstein saw in Bill Gates a blueprint for how he himself could launder his own reputation and rehabilitate himself. Just as you say, Bill Gates, at the turn of the millennium, he was one of the most embattled figures on Earth because of the allegations of Monopoly of Microsoft and people are throwing pies in his face. And then he said, very suddenly he said, I'm going to give away all my money. And like a matter of, over a matter of a few years, he became one of the most beloved figures on Earth. And I think this, Jeffrey Epstein and many other super rich people have followed this same

blueprint. And it worked very effectively for both Gates and for Epstein. You know, Epstein, you know, was arrested in 2019, eventually had his day of reckoning. But that was after years of him escaping scrutiny, escaping investigation, escaping indictment. And I think a key part of that was the philanthropic work that he was doing. And a key part of his philanthropic work was with Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation. It often really frustrates me, I think, when, you know, and I'm sure that you've experienced this, right? When you criticize Gates publicly, and then you always have these people who kind of come back at you and say, listen, he might have done some bad things, but look at all the great things he did for health in Africa, for education, for whatever it is,

right? Because he has funded this. And for me, it's frustrating because it's like, yeah, but he only did this one to launder his reputation, but also because he kind of built this monopolistic empire that gave him so much money that he is able to deploy an amount of wealth that the average person cannot even think to hold, let alone to think of what to do with, right? And so it's like, okay, sure, he might have deployed this money in these various ways, but if everybody had $100 billion or or $50 billion or whatever, I think they would be trying to help people to a certain degree as well

and maybe not with reputation laundering intentions, right? I don't know. I wonder what you make of that argument when you hear it from people because I'm sure you must have heard it a lot as well. I would say, I might differ from what you just said a little bit in the sense that

I actually believe that Bill Gates thinks he's helping the world. It's not all about reputation laundering. I really do think that he thinks he's the smartest guy in the room, the most talented person, that his great wealth gives him this power that he is required to help other people because of his smarts and his wealth. But that's not the same thing as having good intentions. Bill Gates is helping people the only way he knows how, which is by trying to take

control over their lives. He doesn't know, he's a software coder from Seattle. What does he know about African agriculture? And how does he have the hubris to put up billions of dollars to insert himself into the public policy discussion about agricultural development to become one of the most powerful voices shaping African farming. It hasn't worked. It didn't work. His critics and the farmers there said it wouldn't work. And today, farmers are calling on the Gates Foundation to pay reparations for all the harm it's caused. So, I mean, this is what often gets missed in the Gates Foundation's story. It's just that we've been so inundated with these hero stories, lionizing his great giving and the millions of lives he saved.

But if you actually take any time to look at the Gates Foundation's work, in many places you'll see it's actually doing more harm than good. To your point, all of us have ideas about how to fix climate policy, how to regulate AI, how to work on public education, but not all of us have an $86 billion private foundation that we can use to buy a seat at the Democratic decision-making table. So at a certain point, you have to understand that the Gates Foundation is not a philanthropy. It's an unregulated political actor. And it is really another expression of

oligarchy. It's a blueprint that Gates is, he maybe didn't, maybe didn't create it. There were billionaires who came before, but he certainly created the modern archetype for the tech bro to transform from an industry scoundrel into a philanthropic saint. And in the process, you get billions of dollars of tax benefits. You get major reputation laundering and you get major political power. Bill Gates, today, the Gates Foundation, I think they just had a $50 million partnership with Open AI. The Gates Foundation is clearly using its platform, its profiles to promote artificial intelligence and promote it in a very specific way, which is friendly to Open AI, which is friendly to Microsoft, which is friendly to Bill Gates' own investments. But at a point,

it's just, it really is impossible to describe what Gates is doing through philanthropy, as philanthropy, as charity. And I do hope that this Epstein Gates saga opens the door that we can say, there really should be new rules about should we let a foundation become this big and this powerful? Should we let Bill Gates donate money from his private bank account to his private foundation where he continues to control it? At what point is he actually giving away the money if he controls how it's used at every step and it's always used to advance his own political ideologies, his own, if not his own financial interests. So these are some really big questions raised by Jeffrey Epstein, I think.

I feel like what happens in Africa can feel really far away. You know, it's a whole different continent. We're not very familiar with it. Our media doesn't often report on things that are happening in Africa. So unfortunately, you know, what the Gates Foundation does there, a lot of regular people will not often see that or understand the effects of what is happening, right? But I feel like regular people in Europe and North America started to feel what it means to have Gates involved with their lives and things that are important to them during the pandemic, right?

Where we were all waiting for these vaccines. And certainly there were the conspiracy theories around Bill Gates wanting to put microchips in us and all this kind of stuff. But what we saw tangibly was Bill Gates intervening to trying to stop the patents being waived or whatnot on these vaccines so that many more manufacturers could make them, you know, trying to support live. IP rights and things like that, even if that meant vaccines were harder to access, more expensive. And we saw a real backlash against Gates in that moment, not just for the conspiracy reasons, but for the way that he was tangibly intervening in the vaccine process, which feels like it was one of those important moments to continue to turn people against Gates, right? Yeah, it's this endless paradox around Gates is, you know, you have like, especially like on the

political right, these anti-vaxxers who don't like Gates because they see him as the face of vaccines. But then in the political left, you don't like Gates because you're actually, he should be seen as obstructing vaccine access. He's like one of the most powerful obstructionist forces to getting vaccine access. So it's like there's like two different political camps, making two totally different, sharing two totally different realities of what Bill Gates' relationship is. But yeah, it was absolutely, I think a real, the pandemic was a real referendum on the Bill Gates' market-based model, patent forward model, monopolistic model. He was insisting he used all the political cloud he had during the pandemic to insist that the Fisers of the world be able to retain their patent rights.

Even as you had this great, powerful, publicly supported alternative on the table, this idea of a people's vaccine. Many of the poor nations where the Gates Foundation works were part of this movement, saying we need to waive the patents. We need to get every capable manufacturer in the world churning out vaccines to get shots in arms. It does not make sense with millions of people dying, trillions of dollars of damage to the economy, to have three, four, five companies controlled supply of vaccines.

So Bill Gates was very clearly on the wrong side of that history. And to your point, that was a time and a place where people in the rich world were really starting to feel the effects of Gates' influence. I mean, the funny coded to that story is just as the news media started to pay attention, there started to be this bad news cycle around Gates and vaccine. apartheid. Melinda French Gates announced that she was divorcing him and the Epstein stuff started escalating. The allegations of misconduct started escalating. So that unfortunately kind of took the wind out of the sales of what should have been a very vibrant reckoning with the Gates Foundation's

power and influence to say that it's, it is at times very malevolent. It is doing more harm than good. I mean, and the other place that the Gates Foundation works in the rich world is in U.S. public education, which has also been, you know, very disastrous. And the Gates Foundation, itself has acknowledged that its efforts have not worked. But it has this hubris where it thinks, because it has so much money, you can just keep throwing the dart playing with the lives of public school children, whereas the Gates children went to the fanciest private schools, of course. Yeah. And of course, he's been a big kind of advocate for private schools, charter schools, and things like that in the United States. But you were mentioning the media there. And I know that

this has played a big part in your work as well. I wonder what you make of the media's role in this story because on the one hand you do have you mentioned the wall street journal for example earlier media institutions that have been breaking big stories around gates his relationship to epstein his treatment of women at the gates foundation and at microsoft and things like that but at the same time you have also had media creating these really very nice profiles of gates you know taking a lot of money from the gates foundation to do positive coverage of the work that it's doing so So I wonder how you kind of suss out the media's role in Gates and in this story around his relationship to Epstein. Yeah, the media is been a very powerful accomplice in Bill Gates, the success of Bill Gates' philanthropic career and his reputation turnaround.

Because much of the news coverage about Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation focuses on its big donations and its good deeds, its forward-looking goals. There's been very little accountability reporting. And what I've shown is that that bias, that one-sided narrative around Gates and the lack of accountability, it coincides with hundreds of millions of dollars and donations that the Gates Foundation is pouring into news media. You know, all the outlets that we read, you know, the Guardian or Lomón in France, St. St. St. Stegel and Germany, you know, I found financial conflicts of interest at the New York Times. Most major news outlets have some kind of financial tie now or previously or hoped to in the future with the Gates Foundation because it's such a powerful funder of this. the media. But that's not the only reason that I feel like that the news media has historically been soft on Gates. I do think that he just does represent this powerful hero narrative that really buoys up these sort of like neoliberal or capitalistic mythologies. You know, you have a guy who

made a lot of money. Maybe he wasn't perfect at Microsoft, but now he's giving it all away. There are a lot of vested interests in a lot of powerful media organizations that are willing to defend and apologize for the billionaire class. And if, If you want a counterpoint to criticism of oligarchy, in the last 20 years, you always point to Bill Gates. Like, you want to abolish billionaires, but what about Bill Gates? What about the millions of lives he's saving? Think of all the damage that's going to happen on the world stage.

It's very neat narratives. They're total fairy tales because if you point out, you know, if you really look past the research the Gates Foundation Fund, the PR, the Gates Foundation puts out the Gates Foundation. I think you can very credibly argue it's doing more harm than good. But to your question, yeah, with Epstein, something has changed. It's like the gloves have come off a little bit. Again, it's just that tabloid, sensationalistic sex sells things. You have these big, you know, serious, prestigious legacy news outlets. You know, it's funny to me that they don't really do a great job doing accountability of the Gates Foundation. But when it's a story of involving sex, they'll go all in. It's hard for me to criticize the media right now. I think they've done an okay job looking at Gates and Epstein, but there's so many more stories to tell. Of course, you know, there are so many other targets

in the Epstein files for them to look at, including Donald Trump. So, you know, it is a question of capacity and is a question of priorities also. So, you know, I'm out there making my voice heard, and I'll probably be breaking some news in the next, in the days of weeks ahead about Fsteen and Gates from the Epstein files. Looking forward to it. And I wonder then what you make of the response of Gates and what the response should be. We saw him cancel this talk in, in Indian. because the scandal was escalating, he gave this interview in Australia to try to kind of smooth over the scandal as it was growing. You know, we've mentioned this town hall that he did at the foundation, but the scandal continues to grow, right? And it feels like people are reaching this point

where they're really fed up with Bill Gates and kind of what he represents and what he is, right, at least in the public, if not in these other institutions that have had long relationships with the foundation. So my question is, on the one hand, what have you made of how Gates has responded, but what should be the consequences for Gates now in this moment with these revelations? Earlier this week, I called for the removal of Bill Gates from the Gates Foundation, but also the removal of all of the members of its board. So people probably just know this as a matter of management. If you're a big organization, you're going to have a board of directors or board of trustees, it's about governance, about doing checks and balances, about making sure that whether

you're a company or a philanthropy, that what you're doing is appropriate, that it's right, that's within the mission or the values of the organization. And, you know, the board of trustees at the Gates Foundation, they've known about the Gates-Ebstein affair since 2019, and they've never done anything. You know, and now they just look so incompetent and so impotent that they cannot challenge Bill Gates, who also sits on the board of directors.

I mean, this do-nothing rubber-stamp board of trustees, I feel like it's composed of billionaires and global elites, It really is time for them to go. I would like to live in a world where we don't have billionaires and billionaire foundations, but if we are going to allow the $86 billion Gates Foundation to continue to exist, and we're going to allow it to work on agriculture in Africa, maybe the board of directors should have farmers from Africa on it. If the Gates Foundation is going to be a powerful voice in American public education,

maybe you should have some public school teachers on the board of directors. You know, all of these highfalutin global elites and billionaires that are on the board of directors of the Gates Foundation, what do they know really about the needs of the global poor? I think that they're so far removed and it's so obvious how far removed they are that they've, they've oversaw the Gates Foundation's partnership with someone like Jeffrey Epstein. There's just no universe in which you can say that that is a good charitable decision. Like where is the accountability? Where are the checks and balances? And, you know, part of, The issue of accountability, I think there is a time and a place for state and federal regulators to step in. People misunderstand this, but Bill Gates, his philanthropic career has benefited from billions of dollars in tax benefits and tax subsidies. Tax scholars say that every dollar a billionaire gives away up to 74 cents of that they'd otherwise pay in taxes.

So Gates is essentially, you know, very heavily subsidizing his philanthropic career with dollars that really belong to, should belong to the public, that should be taxpayer dollars. So if he's using public funding, this is a clear trigger for accountability for state or federal regulators, the Washington state attorney general, in the federal level would be the IRS or Congress, could step in and provide some oversight and say, you know, what you're doing, the Gates Foundation is really hard for us to square with what, you know, Congress was thinking when we said we should have these things called private foundations and philanthropies. You know, if the board of trustees can't remove Bill Gates or substantively address this in some ways, I don't really see how there can't be some kind of. congressional investigation or other intervention from regulators on this. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. You have been looking into Gates for years. You know, you wrote this fantastic book on Gates, and obviously we're seeing this scandal escalate. But I wonder for you, what is the big takeaway here? Is it a takeaway about Gates? Is it a takeaway about certain forms of philanthropy? Or is it something even bigger? I think it's really an indictment of extreme wealth. You know, when we allow people to become this wealthy, Bill Gates controls like a hundred and something billion dollar private fortune and also in 86 billion dollar private foundation.

Anytime you allow someone to become this wealthy, you know how they'll use the money, which is for political gains, for self-serving projects and practices, to change policies and regulations, to remake the world according to their own interests. So, you know, to me, it's just very clear that it is bad for society, bad for our economy, and bad for our humanity to allow extreme wealth to exist. Jeffrey Epstein would not have been able to do what he did if he wasn't so obscenely wealthy. And the same is true of Bill Gates. So I think, you know, that's where I would love to see this conversation go is to move beyond the questions of sex that they are important, the questions of the victims of Epstein, but to develop into a bigger conversation about money and money.

power. Yeah, I think that's very well said. And I think that is so important right now, looking not just at Bill Gates, but at so many of these other billionaires and what they have been doing, not just recently, but it has really kind of come to everyone's attention recently. Like, it's undeniable what these people are doing, how they're disconnected from like regular people, the kind of world that they're trying to create and how this is so far away from creating a better world for everybody else, right? I wrote my book about Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, but it's really a case study for this larger problem of extreme wealth, because hundreds of other billionaires

are right now lining up their personal fortunes to follow in Bill Gates' footsteps. He was the original tech bro oligarch. He's the Microsoft founder, one of the most embattled people on Earth, and then he's become one of the most admired people on Earth. The Elon Musk and the Jeff Bezos of the world and Mark Zuckerberg to the world, they understand how diabolically clever philanthropy is

in terms of the tax benefits, the political power, the reputation laundering. And what I'm arguing is we don't need a second chapter. We don't need another Bill Gates. The time is now to really address this problem. Very well said. And I hope we do take the opportunity to finally address it. Tim, always great to get your insights.

Thanks so much for coming back on the show. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Paris. Good to talk to you. Tim Schwab is the author of the Bill Gates problem. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with the Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kyla Houston.

Tech Won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week.