The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 56. Bill Gates: Conspiracy theories, AI, and the politician he most admires

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

How does one of the richest men in the world run a business? Is artificial intelligence going to be as big as the Windows PC? What politicians does Bill Gates admire? Bill Gates joins Rory and Alastair on today's episode of Leading to answer all these questions and more. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to The Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispolities.com. Welcome to the Restis Politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Alecester Campbell.

And I think it's fair to say we're with one of the best known names on the planet. And when I say that name, Bill Gates, there'll be listeners who immediately think tech, Microsoft. There'll be listeners who think hard-headed businessman, ruthless entrepreneur, richest man in the world, some who focus on his philanthropy, some who focus, and this is probably what he will want to focus on, the challenges he's involved in today, particularly climate and global poverty. But whichever way you look at him, he is a major figure of recent history. And I want to start, Bill, if I may, first of all by thanking you for being here. You won't remember, but I met you in 1995 with Tony Blair, and it was a time when everybody kind of

felt very, very optimistic. We felt optimistic because we were about to come into power, felt like that. A lot of the big challenges felt like whether it was make poverty history, eradication of disease, debt and development. And I remember you saying that you felt optimistic about the future. Where are you on the optimism-pessimism scale right now about the state of the world? Well, since 1995, the world has made incredible progress. You know, I think almost any measure you pick, you know, the number of kids who survived childhood has gone up dramatically. We've cut that death rate in half from over 10 million year to under 5 million a year,

primarily using vaccines, Gavi, which, you know, the UK should be proud of that as its most impactful humanitarian act ever. And you'd have to say that, you know, if you're a woman, a gay person, you know, overall society's probably more embracing to you today than ever. The digital tools we have, the medicines we have. So there's a lot of progress that's taken place. The only footnote for me is this polarization, whether you look at it through trust data or social behaviors and worry about what that means for politics. That's the only thing I'd say is a trend that kind of scares me. So you are an optimist.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, our innovation, whether it's obesity or malaria eradication, polio eradication, you know, is quite phenomenal. Even very tough problems, you know, if we have the right values and we get serious about them are very solvable. And yet, I guess, there are probably three things that, I guess, why I saw one of them is there's a distinct drop in the number of democracies, so big rise from 88 to 2004. And, you know, we've now had seven military coups in Africa in just over a year. I think the second thing probably is the sense that in a loss of the West, particularly in Europe, but also

in the US, a sense that median incomes have frozen, that inequality has risen, and that people suddenly in opinion polls for the first time consistently seem to think their children will be worse off than they are, may not be true of the developing world, but in developed world. And I think the third thing is in sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people in extreme poverty in absolute terms has gone from about 170 million in 1980 to 470 million today. And in some countries, even as a proportion of the population, places like Malawi, very, very little progress. You know, the situation in Africa has always been the most challenging.

Africa is better off today than it was at any time in the past, despite, you know, the turmoil that exists there. We went up in democracies very dramatically post-World War II, and, you know, we're nowhere near back down to where we were there. And as long as countries are extremely poor, you have incredible instability in their governance. You know, we have to make sure those countries develop and that they're able to, you know, have decent health, decent education. We've made strides in that direction. These wars are always a huge setback. Ethiopia civil war, now Sudan civil war. But Africa is not worse off today than at any time in my lifetime.

It is far, far better off. More kids are surviving. More kids are getting nutrition. It's still, kids are 50 times more likely to die before the age of five than in rich countries. So the inequity there is pretty dramatic. But if you see things going backwards, that must be confusing because... Well, extreme poverty measures, Malawi, $17 billion spent in the last 15 years. Extreme poverty, maybe 70% 15 years ago, almost the same today.

D.R. Congo, very little progress. And it's true that part of this is population growth. So in its percentile terms in Africa, it's come down. But the absolute numbers of people in extreme poverty remain stubbornly high. The progress in Asia has been phenomenal. And the progress in Africa is disappointing. And Africa is heading into a period where their indebtedness and interest costs and literally a reduction in aid flowing to the continent.

because overall aid is not up. It's basically flat. And what there is is being diverted to other causes, including the wars and some of the climate issues that are less focused on African poverty. So Africa is a huge challenge. And yet, you know, we do have new vaccines coming along. We have better seeds, better livestock. Africa will be better off 10 years from now than it is today. We like to talk to our guests on leading about kind of their whole background where they came from. Can you just give us a sense of your childhood and your upbringing who your parents were, what your relationship was like with them, and how that has kind of shaped the person you became? My parents were amazing. My dad was a lawyer, reasonably successful. My mom was very active in the community and eventually on various boards, so also quite quite, sophisticated. They shared the things they were working on. They sent me to an incredible

private school that happened to get a computer when I was 13, a time sharing terminal, actually. So I had an incredible childhood. I had great teachers. I got to buy as many books as I wanted to. And then I went off and I was at Harvard University for a couple of years before I dropped out to start Microsoft. You say you dropped out to start Microsoft. You dropped out because you felt you could and should be doing something different than just getting a formal education. I did the microprocessor that is a computer on a chip being a revolution was something that Paul Allen showed me the article on that back when I was in 10th grade, two years before finishing high school. And, you know, Gordon Morris said it would be exponentially improving.

And we thought, God, this is a miracle. How come everybody's not just constantly in a state of shock? And, you know, this is going to change the world and make computing something that's about individual productivity. Hold on. So you then were about 16? Yeah, I was 16. So what sort of mind did you have and what sort of life had you led that you could say, you see that and say, hold on, this is going to change the world. How many other people in the

world at that time would have read that and thought, this is going to change the world? Maybe a few hundred. I mean, I was lucky that I like mathematics. And so the power of doubling every two years, you know, was pretty clear. I'd used computers by then very intensely for three years. You know, my last year of high school, I actually went and worked writing software instead of going to school because I'd already finished my classes. And I was involved with a lot of really taught programmers who were fascinated that I was pretty good and strove to help me be an even better programmer. So day and night, you know, they'd look at my code and give me a hard time. So I was very immersed in the magic of computers. But this microprocessor thing was going to change the very

nature of how computing was used. And, you know, my friend Paul Allen and I were just, you know, focused completely on how do we get involved. And one of the amazing things is that you went from somebody with a good mathematical mind, interested in engineering, to then being an enormous business leader running this gigantic company. And that began something that we noticed, which is a, what seems to be a very different style of management, which is still there in Silicon Valley, is people with a more introverted engineering mindset, suddenly becoming huge leaders of people. Was that a sort of revolution in business? Do you think that your more sort of rigorous mathematical, logical mind gave you a different management style from some of the management styles of the 40s and 50s?

Well, I always sort of naively thought that intelligence was quite fungible. And so that if you're good at writing code, then you should be good at doing sales. you should be good at management and all those things. In my Microsoft career, I learned again and again that there were a lot of people who are very talented in the engineering side who were terrible managers. And that always stunned me a little bit about, you know, why can't they just go read the books on management and pay attention to what they say? You know, in the early company, I said you should always work for somebody who's smarter than you. you. That didn't last for very long. And so, you know, the idea of different mixes of skills and, you know, what was I good at work? Could I extend my capabilities? I did hire in people

with a lot of different expertise, you know, you could say adults who brought experience and improving skills. But the strategy of what we were doing was always driven by my vision of software. But one of the things I've noted, I mean, in few in things, counters with you is that you are naturally quite, can be quite combative. So I remember when I was the differed sector of state having a conversation with you about German spending and then I remember about two years ago having an argument with you about Iran. And one of things I wondered just sort of personally is, do you like people arguing back? So I think the conversation about Iran, I think I'd said that Iranian villages seem to me to have been a bit stuck and not progressed since I first saw

them in the 90s and you said, no, no, that doesn't feed out in the statistics because, in fact, improvements in women and around, et cetera. Is that part of your management side? Is that part of the way you think? Is that a way you approach the world? Well, the world is very complex. And if you're having a discussion, say, about your malaria eradication strategy, you know, you want to agree on what you agree on and find where you don't agree and, you know, bring new facts to the table. So, it very much depends on the setting. But for the team of people I build to solve hard problems, whether it's at Microsoft or my Breakthrough Energy Climate Group or the Gates Foundation, we have high bandwidth conversations. And if somebody's saying something that we all know,

then we can move pretty quickly on and talk about, okay, which, you know, we've got limited resources, which of these approaches make the most sense. So, yeah, I enjoy listening to people, learning from people. And I, you know, I'm super lucky, whether it's inside the foundation or outside experts, you know, I get to talk to amazing people from all over the world. It's a guy who worked for you, Rob Glazer, said Bill Gates was relentless, Darwinian. He doesn't look for win-win situations with others. He looks for ways to make others lose.

Successes defined as flattening the competition, not creating excellence. Is that fair summation of when you were starting out and Microsoft was becoming the giant that it became? No, because there were no other software companies. So we decided software would be important. And we were the first. And we created, we had this notion of high volume, low cost software that simply didn't exist. You know, that's a quote from somebody who made money by suing Microsoft. So, what about you were involved in a lot of big legal cases?

And the definition that was applied to you was a kind of monopolistic, that you had this monopolistic view of the world and kind of defend that. So just give us a sense of how you perceived yourself and your style when you were very rapidly becoming this extraordinary success story. Well, Microsoft had the idea of building a software factory, that is building tools, hiring the smartest people, and being able to do every kind of software faster than anyone else. And so we went into a lot of different software categories,

operating systems, or processing, spreadsheet, database, you name it. And our view was always to lower the prices by at least a factor five of any category that we got into. And so we were a daunting competitor. We gained market share, you know, And word processing, there were things like WordStar, WordPerfect, you know, there were database things. But we outran them. We underpriced them.

So we were trying to get software, as we said, into every home and every desk. And you couldn't do that with a high price strategy. Only by constantly getting those prices down could you get this pervasive impact. And so it probably wasn't fun to compete with us. but we had a vision of what software could do. And in terms of your own personal psychology, I mean, many, many very successful business people never let business go.

It sort of gets in their blood. I notice that in many cases, instead of making a fortune and then sort of taking early retirement, business people remain very, very interested in investing. But you seem to have balanced that with your philanthropic work. Are you still quite involved in business, still quite interested in business, along with the stuff you're doing with the Gates Foundation?

Well, I have three activities, By far the biggest is my work at the Gates Foundation. And the other two are my breakthrough energy climate work and then my ongoing advisor status with Microsoft and all this new AI work. And you remain very interested in Microsoft and where it's going. Very. And Satya does a great job of engaging me on the issues that the company has right now.

And I'm very close to the team at OpenAI as well. And I wouldn't really differentiate my foundation work from business. It's, you know, the Gates Foundation is a set of experts. The only thing that's unusual about it is that we're maximizing, improving poor people's condition instead of maximizing profit. You know, so we have teams that are every bit as smart as any group I ever had at Microsoft, but the discussion is, you know, polio is evil. How do we get rid of it?

Malaria is evil. How do we get rid of it? And every skill I developed at Microsoft, working in Japan, working in China, assembling different skill sets together, you know, I'm drawing on all of that. Now, I've also had to bring in people who understand drugs and drug trials and had to learn a bit of that myself. But the intensity is the same. and the importance I'd say is even greater than anything I did at Microsoft.

What's your sense of your own power and status in the world? So you could go to pretty much any country in the world and presidents, prime ministers, want to see you. When you go to most of these countries, do you feel as powerful or more powerful than them? Certainly not. I'm not a government. I don't have an army. But you outlive most of them, you outlast most of them.

You've had, wealth gives you status and power, your position in the world. I just have a sense of whether you have that feeling that you are a very, very powerful figure. And what sort of responsibility you feel that gives you? Well, I do a lot of my travel in Africa where the majority of our work is. And my opportunity when I see ahead of state is so precious to tell them, hey, here's where you're not vaccinating your kids. Here's the number of kids who are dying because your primary health care system isn't working well. Here's where we think you could make this a lot better. You know, here's where your farmers don't have the right inputs. And so they have periods of

food shortages. You know, so yeah, I try to use those opportunities to get people who weirdly don't focus as much on health type things as they probably ought to, you know, politics. You're making yourself sound almost like a policy advisor. Yes. The Gates Foundation has a lot of expertise in nutrition and kids being healthy and the next steps on, you know, happening kids a year die from malaria, which is it's a tragedy. And, you know, even the kids who survive don't develop physically and mentally the way they should. And so, you know, we should be moving at full speed. to change that. Bill, Alastair, let's take a break.

Hi, everybody, it's Dominic Samarach here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics, when Rory was away, and I was filling in and enjoying Alastair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest is History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment. moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise, people are arguing about

Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues, and people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history. We'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975,

a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. And we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is history wherever you get your podcasts. We talked a little earlier about the sort of relative rise or decline of democracy around the world. I guess the one democracy in the world that we always assumed would be fairly healthy and fairly strong was the one where you come from, the United States. And that actually feels quite vulnerable to me at the moment. Can I get your assessment of the health of American democracy right now?

Well, it's a little scary because we have populism, which you have. would expect, but it's come in a form where the ability to accept election results is really up in the air and some of the norms about what the government does and how it works. So, yeah, it's a big election that'll take place in November. Do you get active in that? You know, I've always worked with whatever administration is in power. You know, I worked well with Democratic presidents and Republican presidents. But, you know, we have quite a contrast in terms of being willing to help other countries, you know, for example, foreign aid, you know, even programs that were created by Republicans like the PEPFAR, which is the six billion year of HIV medicines.

That's George Bush thing. We celebrated with George. The 20th year of that, it was 2003 that he got that put in place. So, you know, for the issues I care about, which are helping other countries and participating globally to improve welfare and maintain peace, you know, it's an election that will have consequences. So, and I'm reading from that that to some extent you've chosen not to get too actively political because you want to focus on your international philanthropic work and you can't see the point in picking fights with incoming administrations. That's been my approach. And, you know, we've had good successes with Republicans and Democrats, but this is the strong contrast in terms of, you know, caring about our issues. And the first Trump administration, they proposed phasing out the HIV medicine and the Congress resisted that. But, you know, I think this next time around that it might not go that way. But just sort of quickly, just before we leave your international philanthropic work, one of the things which has been staggering over the last 15 years is the development of randomized control trials, and particularly the extraordinary evidence around the impact of unconditional cash transfers. And one of the things that's really holding it back is the ability to go to a scale at a national scale

and to find some philanthropists prepared to put two, three, four billion dollars into delivering unconditional cash to everybody in extreme poverty. in, let's say, Malawi or Rwanda. That isn't something that you've particularly wanted to do, and I'd be interested in why instinctively the Gates Foundation isn't writing $4 billion checks for giving cash to everyone in extreme poverty as opposed to fixing on the other good things that you do. Malaria kills the happening children every year. I don't care if you write them a check.

That's not a good thing. The majority of kids in Africa never develop their brain or their body because of malnutrition problems. And weirdly, research on that was not being funded. You know, the direct giving thing is interesting. But, you know, if I gave all the money that we spend each year, you know, it'd be like $1.50 a year and nobody would work on malaria. Once you get rid of a disease, you know, the payoff over time is pretty incredible.

Now, I embrace all philanthropy, particularly philanthropy that's helping the poorest. And we need lots and lots of philanthropists. You know, everybody who's wealthy should be engaged in helping the poorest. And through the giving pledge, I've tried to encourage that. But there are some areas that I can't cover. Health is one where we go after all of these diseases of, inequity. Can I ask you about the foundation in this context?

So it's the Gates Foundation and it's you and Melinda and yet you've been through a divorce. How have you managed to do that and then still work together? I find that quite a, I would find that a challenge, I think. You know, I give Melinda immense credit for, you know, being super committed to the foundation. And the foundation benefits immensely from her skill set. You know, a lot of the people issues, women issues, you know, she's been part of making the strategy since we created it together. You know, so I'm very glad that she's chosen to stay involved and we work, we work well together. And tell us a little bit about your three children. You've just become a grandfather.

Has that changed you, mellowed you, softened you? You know, it's pretty special to have a granddaughter. She'll turn one next month. You know, she gets me two and three. You know, I can take on trips and do more things. And it makes you think about the future. You know, that granddaughter, you know, will be around in 2100. And, you know, things we do now will influence what that world will be.

will be like. So, you know, it makes you step back. It's all part of the aging process where you're, you know, being more wise and, you know, empowering other people. And what do you think it's been like for your children to be your children? It has huge advantages and huge disadvantages. I'm very impressed how all three of them have handled that mix of... How would you define the advantages and the disadvantages? Well, the advantage is that you're not worried about money. You go to great schools, you know, can develop your skills in any direction you want without worrying about your income. You can meet interesting people. As you grow up, you got to go to Africa a lot and see the world.

Disadvantages? Oh, people pay attention to you because of your parents rather than yourself. You know, that can be kind of artificial. If they disagree with your parents, they might be disagreeable towards you, you know, on balance, you know, it's probably net positive, but it's not without its challenges. Thinking, as you said, being a grandfather and getting into an older stage of life, is there a sense in which you would like to have a final chapter? I mean, you've had two extraordinary chapters as a business person and then as a philanthropist.

But I guess, I don't know how you would think, but maybe you have 10, 15, 20 years of active life left. Have you got a sense that there's some new type of chapter? Well, hopefully 20. I've taken on some big challenges. I mean, the work in global health and agriculture, we have some very ambitious goals, including malaria eradication, you know, shaping AI so that it helps the poorest, both in rich countries and in developing countries, and it's a gigantic force for equity.

that's a huge opportunity, a huge challenge. So, you know, I love my work. You know, the people I get to work with, the potential for progress. So, yeah, I hope I get 20 more years. That would be fantastic. And on the AI issue, we talked to Reid Hoffman on the podcast a while back, and we also talked to Mustafa Sutherman. And I sense there's a sort of sliding scale of optimism and pessimism on that one as well.

You seem to be in the very optimistic side of the debate on AI. You see this as a majorly net positive for the world. Well, whenever you have innovations, they're kind of neutral in a way and they can end up, you know, empowering just the rich. They can end up, you know, having unexpected negative side effects. You know, with AI, we can already say that, you know, bad people can use this as a tool for cyber attack or designing weapons of bioterrorism. So, you know, we have to shape this so that the good things like tutors for kids who need to learn, you know, better medical advice, we need to shape this and, you know, have great AIs that are doing cyber defense. You know, so making sure it's used well will be important. So, yeah, I sure all the concerns, but I also see the positives as being incredibly large.

Yeah. But, Bill, I mean, obviously, you know far more about both computers. of some government regulation than either of us or almost anyone in the world. So on the basis of your vast experience of this, what are the kinds of things that you think policymakers maybe need to focus on that they're not focusing on? What are some of the big structural challenges of a technological change like this that maybe we haven't grasped yet? Well, the hardest thing is that since World War II, most technologies that had to do with weaponry, the U.S. and its allies, were ahead. And that was even kind of a nice industrial bootstrap, that low-volume technologies

were used by the military and then eventually would come down and cost and be applicable to a broad industrial or consumer market. Today, AI, the government market for it is not large enough to really shape anything. The big market is business and consumers. And, And so, you know, governments have a challenge that, you know, they aren't the early people who funded it. Actually, if you go way back 20 or 30 years ago, it was government research money. But now it's the Google, Microsoft, et cetera, R&D money is huge. And so how do you get the collaboration with these state-of-the-art things where government is thinking about it? It's harder than in the past.

And how about proliferation? I mean, at the moment, it's very dominated by huge companies like Microsoft, but Facebook has been open sourcing things. There's been drives to try to get AI off the ground in UAE. One could imagine, presumably, a world in which quite powerful large language models in 10 years' time are in the hands not of four enormous American companies, which could be presumably regulating control more easily, but in the hands of many, many people outside the United States with more risk. Is that right? Well, but the key thing is that. is that the good guys have better AIs than the bad guys. The issue is not the AIs getting out of control. It's AIs by people with ill intent being more powerful. So just take cyber defense.

If the good guy's cyber defense AI is as good or better than the bad guy's cyber attack AI, then that's a good situation. And you're not going to stop development of AI globally somebody can argue that maybe you should try and do that and create a world army to go around and invade computer labs, but not many people are pushing on that. And so you're going to have these increasingly powerful AIs that hopefully the good guys stay ahead on. And that basically requires essentially that you guys are making the progress and that we don't end up with some giant emerging in some unfriendly state, China and Middle East or something, which is then able to leapfrog ahead. Well, I wouldn't necessarily say that particular countries are bad guys. So there are bad Americans and Brits too, Rory. You know, Russia is the one who's, you know, attacked a neighboring country.

And, you know, hopefully most countries want to see this stuff be shaped appropriately. You've been a leader. You've met a lot of leaders. Just give me a sense of what sort of leader you admire. both from business and from politics, which give me a couple of business leaders and a couple of political leaders that you look at and you think, I like them, I've learned from them. Well, the business leader I probably learned the most from is Warren Buffett. He's not in the tech industry, but he's incredibly thoughtful.

I got to know him a long time ago, and I'm still learning from him. What's qualities does he have that most don't? He steps back and he's thoughtful about how business works. He thinks a lot about people. You know, he shares his thoughts in his annual letter. He's a student of human nature. And, you know, his understanding of the world has led to sort of unbelievable level of success. And in terms of all the different companies that he's either owned part of or owned all of.

And politics? You know, in politics, you know, I have to be careful. careful in terms of, you know, saying who my favorites are. They can be dead. You know, people who believe in helping other countries. I mean, you know, we had the period in the UK where you had Blair and Brown and Cameron and the aid budget, you know, went all the way up to 0.7%. And that was miraculous.

And that money was well spent. I mean, that's the Global Alliance for Vaccines. which this year will go into replenishment. Do you think the UK has lost its leadership role in this space? It's up in the air, I'd say. Quite diplomatic, that. I mean, we've dropped from 0.7 to 0.5. We're spending a lot on refugees inside the United Kingdom, the overall expenditure.

No, we're not at the peak, but you're still, the 0.5 well spent still makes a massive difference. And so, for example, maintaining your commitment to Gobi, where the UK's been the biggest funder of Gopi, the Gates Foundation, the second. You know, that'll show that, you know, you still believe in this stuff. You know, someday it'd be nice for the country to get back to point seven. And presumably to spend less on refugees inside the United Kingdom and more abroad. Yeah, and those, you know, you're not, you're not allowed to count that after they've been here for several years. So hopefully doing a good job getting them into employment. So they're

not a huge, huge drain. But yeah, we've had that as a diversion in many countries. And that's why, if you look at the African number, it's gone down quite a bit. It's shocking. I mean, when I, I think my bilateral budget when I was in office in 2019 was over four billion pounds. And as far as we can tell from the figures of the moment, they probably spent 600 million bilaterally last year. And it's been an astonishing drop. Well, the point, the cut to point. 5 is tough and then you have these multi-year commitments. Many of the multilateral things I would stick up for, Gavi, Global Fund, even the World Bank Ida, which most people don't understand, is a key source of finance, particularly as things are financially difficult for African countries

right now. I mean, very, very difficult. Can I return to answer this question? Give us a sense for a human being, a politician that you really admired as a person, not just, in terms of their commitment to 0.7. But is there a world leader that you've met and you've thought, I like the way their mind works. I'm impressed by that. I mean, who did you warm to as a person? Well, I've gotten to know, in both Brown and Blair pretty well. I'll actually see Tony Blair today.

Our foundation works with him in terms of helping African governments have more capacity. And I always value talking to him, learning from him. I have to say Cameron coming in and saying that he was going to push the aid level up, the first time I met him and was like, really? Wow. That is quite incredible. You know, so there are leaders who take these issues that don't have a gigantic constituency, but the moral impact of is phenomenal and choose to prioritize those. How did you feel this came out particularly during, COVID and the work you were doing on vaccines for that. How do you feel when you become part of this

all kind of conspiracy theory stuff going on? Does that bother you? Does it get to you at all? Well, I'm in my overall situation, I have nothing to complain about. You know, somebody coming up to me on the street, which is Apple sometimes, and saying that I've chipped them and I'm following them around, you know, as long as I'm safe, you almost have to laugh that, you know, lady, why would I want to know where you are? I mean, really, is that how I spend my time, is tracking you? But how do you think this stuff happens? Because it became like a kind of running theme during the pandemic.

No, I, you know, on a global basis, you know, I either started it or was profiting from it and doing all sorts of strange things. That was completely unexpected. Is that the first time it really happened on that scale? Yeah, no, I never had anything like that. I mean, as it had of Microsoft, people love you, people hate you, you know, you made it hard for other software companies to charge lots of money. And so there were certainly extreme viewpoints, but completely making up, you know,

like saying that I profit from vaccines or that vaccines, instead of saving millions of lives, actually are bad for children. You know, that's a total reversal. And the fact that people needed a simple explanation during the pandemic. But in a way, you became victim there to something that's happening to a lot of people in politics now, which is the whole fake news thing

and the power of a conspiracy theory to take hold. Do you have within the organization people who are actually thinking about how you deal with stuff like that, or do you just accept it as part of the baggage of being a very wealthy, very powerful, well-known person? Well, it's gone down somewhat with the end of the pandemic.

But, you know, like there were a few malaria cases that showed up in the U.S. And people were saying, okay, that's me doing that. Or, you know, I own one four thousandths of the farmland in the U.S. And people have some view that somehow tricks that. Yeah, one four thousandth. It's quite a lot of the country. Of the farmland. But what can you do with one four thousandth share?

At least in my math, I, at least in my math, I, you have a hard time pulling off a conspiracy, unless you get up to at least two or three, four thousands. And I have people who track it, and we often think which of these things should you respond to. You know, if they get broad enough, then you want to respond. If they're just in the truly crazy niche, then probably you don't want to amplify it.

So, as we mentioned, we've been talking to Reid Hoffman, and of course, one of the things he's very interested, in is friendship. And I wondered whether you had any particular thoughts on friendship yourself. Yeah, I'm good friends with Reed. And I do think in the thinking about how you relate to people, there's a David Brooks book that just came out called How to Know a Person, which was pretty fantastic, you know, got me thinking a lot about, okay, as I'm listening to people, is it clear to them that, okay, in what situations am I? And illuminate. which is a positive term use where people feel seen and energized by how you're engaged with them.

And how many people do I have the energy to really stay up to date with them? And am I, you know, if I really pick that and do that well, you know, so during these last 20 years or whatever, I'm a good friend. So I read, I love the fact that even us nerdy guys are thinking about our humanity and trying to do better. And just for I go back to my last, meditation is something that I notice you talk about a bit or at least sometimes when I go on some app, or read a book, there's a recommendation from Bill Gates. But is that still a very active part of your life?

I never got into this super long meditation where you do like an hour or go off for three days or things. I did, and it comes and goes, have a practice of taking 15 minutes in the morning with things like headspace and found that valuable. But I have to admit, you know, I'll get busy and, you know, I can go six months and then, you know, go back to it. It's a little bit like my physical therapy.

My last question relates to climate. You do hear a lot of young people sort of feel that the climate battle is kind of lost, that we're not on track, that the world is kind of burning and going to hell and a half. card. Now, you don't think that. You were more optimistic. So just give that pessimistic young person a reason to be hopeful, but also a reason to get active. Well, there's a great book. They had a Ritchie, not the end of the world book, you know, which some people will find controversial. It's a very important corrective to remind people, A, we are making progress. And B, you know, the world does not end at two degrees, particularly in 10. We don't want to get there,

though. We will get there. There's no stopping us passing two degrees. In temperate zone countries, in terms of your overall economy or livelihoods, it's actually not a gigantic thing. Yes, you have to pay to make various changes. You have to have air conditioning more like the U.S. does in kind of this pervasive way. The really bad stuff is if you let it go, say, above three degrees, or if you live near the equator and you're dependent for your food on your yearly harvest, you have no savings. And so the fact that the weather is going to make things tougher, you know, that really is, is quite dramatic.

And so take, for example, the UK, emissions per person are down very dramatically. You started the coal thing. Now you're by and large out of that. The government made some commitments, which I think are great, you know, to try and have nuclear B complement to the renewables, which makes it more feasible to get completely green. You know, so climate, there's incredible innovation going on, which I have a group Breakthrough Energy that funds a lot of that. And what I'm seeing makes me very hopeful that will, you know, stay not too far above two degrees and that the right adaptation. can mean the overall impact is not super disastrous. Final question for me.

What's the most interesting human personal thought that you've had over the last few years? You talked about Warren Buffett sharing wisdom. What would be a sense of a type of wisdom that you felt she've developed over the last few years? An insight. Well, I'm sure there's one single sentence thing. If you were writing a book about your life, life and everything you learned, how would you kind of sort of start that book? How would you encapsulate what you feel you've learned as a person through your life?

You know, I benefited by being a student and never giving that up, you know, a sense of curiosity. You know, I find the world really fascinating. I'd encourage other people, you know, maybe different subject areas than the ones like math that drew me in. But that's worked super well for me. You know, even, you know, today I'll sit with research scientists on a couple of topics and they'll tell me about their latest work. And I'll think, okay, can I help facilitate that? And how does that go forward?

So you've got to stay curious. Stay curious, you know, get involved in things that can surprise people. on the positive side, hopefully with the value-based goal of reducing inequity. And what have you learned not to do if you would, from your younger self? I think most people who are driven are very tough on themselves, like, you know, if you're thinking is sloppy or if you didn't work hard enough. And it's very hard not to take whatever that standard is that you're driving yourself with and over-apply that to other people.

Like if they say something that's kind of sloppy, okay, if you said that, you'd say to yourself, I'm an idiot today. But over time, really thinking twice about, okay, on balance, I want to challenge this person, but also I pick them and I'm spending time with them because I see that they have incredible potential. So I should never confuse them about that. you know, if you get to that point, fine, spend time with someone else. So management and leadership, the way you do it to yourself versus others, it took me certainly into my 30s before I understood how utterly different those two things were. Well, listen, thanks for coming in. Thanks for talking to us.

And see you soon. Thank you very much indeed. Bye-bye. Thanks. Thank you. Well, first see, Alastair, a huge, huge thank you. for getting Bill Gates on. I mean, that's a really serious person,

and I'm very pleased that we managed to get him on the show. What did you think of it? I mean, fascinating. He obviously is a hugely interesting figure. Very interesting to watch him close up. Lightened up at moments when I didn't necessarily expect him to, and sort of slightly, what's the opposite of lightning up? Got a bit heavier.

Got a bit heavier and more defensive. Other times, I didn't expect it. he's and I actually although I think he struggled a bit with your final answer about wisdom I think the whole stay curious thing is is actually that there's a restlessness in there that you feel when you're so difficult to read him isn't it I mean I he is extremely clever he reads all the time he you know particularly of course was was praising this this book which comes out as somebody who works on the world in data which you admire he's very very interest in data. I felt when I've interacted with him in the past a little bit what people

said about him as a business person, which is this real sense that he often does quite like picking a fight around a statistic. And you can feel sometimes that he's trying to prove that he's cleverer than you. And I of course can get a bit irritated about this because if he's arguing about Iran. Because you're clever than him. He went to another private school, but you were doing it. I don't think so much about that. I think it's more, for something like when we were arguing about Iran, I thought, well, wait a second. You know, I do speak a bit of fasty. I've spent quite a lot of time in Iran. You haven't given me a little bit of respect, give me a bit of space, the possibility that I might know what I'm talking about.

But I think he, I get a feeling that when we're talking, for example, about what it's like kind of being him going around the place. And he's very well known. He's, as he says, he can stop by people of the street and say, why are you chipping me? he's got the kind of the apparatus around him almost of a kind of head of government. And yet, I sort of felt he was quite surprised when I asked him whether he felt more powerful than heads of state and heads of government. Like he doesn't. But he's into, I think he's very conscious of the fact that governments can do things

that he can't do. I mean, it's the big question of course of our world, because these people worth over $100 billion have unbelievable power. But his answer, I don't have an answer. I don't have an army. And I guess he would also remember the monopoly trust cases taken against him by the US government. He will be conscious that there are things governments can do, tax people, police, army, that even the richest man in the world can't do. I mean, in the end, of course, the US government, if he broke the law, would put him in prison and it wouldn't matter that he was.

I thought his, it was interesting how he didn't particularly want to single out politicians. I was obviously very pleased that clearly Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were his most popular politicians. But then he felt, I've got to mention the Tory, so I'll throw in David Cameron as well. But he doesn't want to – and even though anybody listening to that will understand, I think, that he's pretty scared about Donald Trump coming back. He's not like Reid Hoffman, who comes out and says, this is a real and present danger to the world, and I'm going to give loads of my money to Joe Biden to help stop him. He doesn't want to do that.

Exactly. So if Reid Hoffman had been questioning me, he would – say, look, all this stuff is fine that you're doing, but the biggest existential threat, almost to the world, is Donald Trump coming in. And if you really want to put money in an efficient way, stopping Donald Trump becoming the president, will make more difference the world over the next five years than anything else you can do. He clearly doesn't quite feel that. I also interested in your view on, it's a bit unfair, but on his communication style, because he is very cautious, almost, I felt sometimes more cautious than a politician. Politicians

learned to at least sound like they're being a bit more relaxed. He was in therapy 11, wasn't he? Had quite difficult relations, I think, with his mum. I think the stories, at least in the biographies, are that he was very, very bright. He was in a state school, which wasn't really testing him, and his parents felt that actually they had to get him into this private school, which he benefited from incredibly. But because he wasn't really being tested, wasn't really been pushed. But I think also you can see how, let's imagine he didn't have any money.

Let's imagine that he didn't have much power. It was interesting when he arrived, for example, you were outside getting a cup of tea. I was sitting here and he suddenly just sort of appeared at the door. You wouldn't look at him if he didn't know who he was and think, there's a really powerful guy. Yeah. He doesn't look like a kind of powerful guy. He looks a kind of pretty average American bloke. Yet he's developed into this phenomenon and has been at various stage of his life,

the richest man on the planet and remain from an incredibly young age I mean one of the weird things is that he was a huge global celebrity I think even in his late 20s in his late 20s

and so it must be very odd to carry for 40 years the sense that you are and of course business is a sort of religion I mean you know everybody or many many many people around the world

hundreds of millions of people are obsessed with his business story how did he make his money so it must be very very odd to have all that projected on you And then there's something quite heroic about him maintaining his curiosity, continuing to read difficult books. I also felt there was a kind of, there was a deeper sense of humour that was wanting to get out at times. But he's quite, he stays buttoned.

If we'd had longer, how would one have really gotten to talk a little bit about the personality traits of politicians he liked or their characters or anecdotes? Because again, even with two pushings, it's very much I like them because they committed 0.7%. And then I'll make the case. I'll say again, Tony Blair, Gordon, Brown, David Cameron, and Gavi, the International Vaccine Program, etc. So I think he's, I don't think he'd be that successful a politician. I think he'd find it quite difficult. And I think that's one of the reasons why he, although he's involved in these massively

political issues, he stays out of what we would define as politics. So I suspect, you'll, listen, you know these countries, he'll go to some of these countries where he's sitting down with dictators, he's sitting down with people who don't share necessarily the values. but he's not going to call them out because he's trying to help them improve as countries. Yeah, you notice that when I said, you know, what happens they,

I guess in the hands of China or the Middle East, he immediately said, oh, I'm not sure, you know, that they're necessarily bad countries. Yeah. He was prepared, I think, except Russia as a... I think Russia as a current bad actor is a pretty home run for any American, I would have thought. No, but he was...

I think he's... What I liked was being able to sit here and judge somebody. I always like to see, look in their eyes and see, do they really, really, really care about this stuff? And the truth is, he really, really, really cares about this stuff. He really cares about this. I think the other thing that's weird about being Bill Gates is that the first thing that people are aware of meeting him is that he's worth over $100 billion. And so if you're me working in the field of international development, all that happens all the time is what I tried to do to him, which is to try to try to convince him that he should be putting his money into whatever we believe in.

I mean, when you weren't in the room, I did try and say, look, have you thought about investing in Burnie Football Club? We're down in the bottom of league at the moment. He had the same answers he did to my idea of unconditional cash transfers. Burnley Football Club is really important, but I think malaria may be more. But if you look at the list of causes, campaigns,

that he makes very, very large contributions to, it's a very long list. And it's really impressive. I mean, I may be frustrated about the fact that I'm not convincing him something I deeply believe, which is that I think he's not thinking enough about poverty in and of itself. His focus is on health, really. He wants children not to die.

He wants people to live longer. But if I was having longer, I would say, but one of the challenges is they may be living longer in lives of miserable grinding poverty. And actually giving $1,000 to someone can really allow them to address their nutrition, allow them to address their education, their shelter, all these things that he's not engaged with. But his superpower is also his focus. if he'd been more liable to be dragged in a hundred directions by these kind of conversations, he wouldn't have achieved as much as he has on things like malaria and pedia.

Good. Well, on was an upward. See you soon. See you soon. Thank you.