Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
What are the words you think of when you hear the name Bill Gates, tech, visionary, innovator, philanthropist. I don't know. Maybe some people would think vaccine, microchip implants.
Yeah, truly, supporter of nuclear energy.
Yeah, that's one too few. It's a phrase. Yeah. How about billionaire nerd savior and king also works. That's the title of a new book by Ada Das, South Asia, correspondent for The New York Times. It focuses on the life of what many would consider a pretty complicated and extremely accomplished individual.
Got it nailed? Joins us now from New York.
The full title of our book, by the way, is as you just said, Billionaire Nerd Savior, King, Bill Gates and his Quest to Shape Our World.
It is out today. Prita.
It is so nice to have you here on Blueberg Business Week. I always think about a book like this, someone very well known. We talk about Bill Gates a lot here at Bloomberg.
Why did you write this book?
What was it about Gates beyond being one of the world's richest and most recognizable. Was there one specific event or.
Just why did you do it?
Yeah?
Thanks Carrol. Two stories.
One is that when in twenty fourteen, when I was at the Wall Street Journal, I came across Bill Gates's fortune and the investment firm that manages it. Now very few people knew about it. It's called Cascade, and the way his money was invested, from the Four Seasons hotel to farmland to all kinds of assets made it really interesting because it was like an investment firm but belonging
to one man. And so in twenty twenty one, move to The Times, and then I got pulled into the reporting when the divorce of Bill and Melinda happened, because I had this context for their fortune, and so that then got me thinking about who is this man? You know, we'd always thought, as you said, you know, we'd always thought of him in all these different ways, but you know, who is he behind all of these kind of images.
So in twenty twenty one that was my ahamament. I thought it's worth investigating the persona and the man.
Well, there's a lot to unpack here because it's four decades in public life and He's done a lot, not just when it comes to building Microsoft, but also of course philanthropy. I loved the excerpt of the book in the New York Times just a few days ago about his evolving relationship with Warren Buffett. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you reported not just that part of the book, but also who you spoke to to paint this portrait of this complicated person.
I mean, I can't divulge my sources.
But.
You can. You can if you want. You know, Warren, did Warren talk to you?
Warren spoke on the record. You know he is in fact, you know, I used to cover Again, a lot of this goes back to the Journal when I was a reporter. You know, I used to write about Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. So the relationship of the two men was also equally interesting. The first time I saw them at the Berkshire Hathway meeting, just kind of walking around, you know, talking to shareholders, and it just struck me as kind of a you know, a very casual but very intimate friendship.
And then I began looking at it and seeing that you know, they've talked about each has talked about the other and sort of the magic of their friendship over the decades, and you know, Bill Gates definitely has kind of advertised that piece of it.
It's almost like part of his brand. Every year, nearly every on.
Gates notes his blog, he posts something like a goofy video or post dedicated to Buffett, and so that was really interesting to me. But in recent years, I think once Buffett decided that he wasn't he had always said that he wasn't going to give his money to anyone. He hadn't decided who he was going to give his money to after his death, but there was always like an assumption that the Gates Foundation stood to get all
of the money. And when he eventually decided who was going to get that money after he died, it was not going to be the Gates Foundation, And so I think there was a little bit of tension there that I tried to capture in that piece that The Times ran, and it was you know, I think they have very
different lifestyles. Buffett, as I'm sure you guys know, is a kind of more folksy, simple sort of person, very Midwestern, and then Gates has more of the traditional trap things of a billionaire, So it was interesting to see their divergent paths but also examine the basis of their friendship.
You know, you said earlier about you know, you wanted to kind of dig into the persona and the man.
Are they that different?
Yeah, that's that's a really interesting question.
I think that plays into a lot of what we in the media, how we and what we write and what we choose to write feeds into the image of a person who's in the in you know, the public eye, in the sense that you interact with someone, you see him or her in a closed setting, you get more of a sense of who they are based on interactions, based on your sources. You start creating this image of a person in the media. So it's true the persona is based on many fundamental elements of who the person is,
but then it also takes on its own life. And then if you're a billionaire or you have like a lot of resources that you can dedicate to that, then I think you're basically sustaining, nurturing, minimizing, you know, enhancing certain aspects of that image to really.
Suit your needs and ends. And this isn't.
Necessarily nefarious, but it's just what image making can do. And so I think there are elements of a person's internal personality or like in close settings, and then how that gets, how that feeds into a persona and how then people kind of keep manufacturing and finessing it, which to me was really interesting.
Budgates, did you like him as you did this process?
Well, he didn't grant me an interview, so that you know, I couldn't tell.
You any more than that.
But but you talk to a lot of people about him, and we can get for a picture of someone maybe clearer than the narrative that's out there publicly.
Absolutely.
I think what was most interesting to me is that the essential person has not changed. Right.
He's mellowed obviously over the decades.
We all do, but his essential personality the way he's obviously supremely smart, but he can sometimes be abrasive, he can be impatient with employees. He enjoys, you know, working in a combative culture. And that was the case of Microsoft, and that is also the case of the Gates Foundation, except that what happens is that Microsoft rewarded that sort of competitive, you know culture, whereas the Gates Foundation. I think people come from very different backgrounds, So it sat
uncomfortably inside the Gates Foundation. But it struck me as really interesting that he was essentially the same person, but he had also changed his image over the decades, you know, to find that continuity, the consistency in so many ways, but to then place it against how we looked at him as a nerd, sort of ruthless monopolist.
This is, you know, philanthropist.
Rockefeller, like Robert Baron kind of thing.
Because you write about its absolutely.
What was the anti trust? Was the anti trust issue at Microsoft? Was that a pivotal turning point for him or when do you think this metamorphosis or transformation began?
Yeah, it did.
I think he had always said that he was going to give the bulk of his fortune to philanthropy. I think the time hadn't been decided. And you have to remember that in the nineteen nineties there was only Microsoft. Now we think about Google and Amazon and Facebook and a lot of companies that are facing similar antitrust scrutiny. But in the nineteen nineties, the late the second half of the nineties, Microsoft was it. It was the company.
It captured everyone's imagination. But also, and as a result of that. I think Gates' performance, even though we didn't have social media then and we didn't have viral moments, Gates's performance riveted and people realized that this was a man who just who would become a distraction for Microsoft. So I think it made sense for him to then step step down from the CEO role in two thousand and Also, he was tired.
I think he just he said a.
Source of mind told me that he was tired, didn't nowhere else to go, and he just also felt that Microsoft was a shiny example of American innovation and why was the government going against him? And so I think there was there was a lot of confusion and a lot of pain. And then he turned to philanthropy because it was there. It was something he had always intended to do, and he found that he really liked it. And then it was go big or go home, because
that's that's what Gates, that's who Gates is. He started Microsoft, changed the personal computing world, and now he's changed philanthropy with this Mammoth Foundation.
Hey, you mentioned anti trust. There's a headline crossing the Bloomberg terminal right now. Kind of perfect timing on your part, I should say US anti trust enforcers are reviewing Google remedy options and a rare bid to break up Alphabet's Google is one of the options being considered by the Justice Department after a landmark court ruling found that the company monopolized the online search market. According to people with knowledge of the deliberations, do.
You want to point out?
Shares of Alphabet or down about one point three percent in the aftermarket. The move would be Washington's first push to dismantle a company for illegal monopolization since own sex unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft.
We were just talking about that. That was, of course, two decades ago. Less of your.
Options include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products. This is according to the people who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations. Again, Shares of Alphabet down about one point five percent in the aftermarket. I want to get back to We're talking with Anna Prita Das. She is a South Asia correspondent for The
New York Times. Her new book, as we said, is about Bill Gates in Your Nerd Savior, King Bill Gates and his quest to shape our world.
Just get about a.
Minute and a half and then we'll come back and talk some more. Did you find a lot of surprises in this process in terms of new things you learned about Bill Gates?
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things, Carol is we didn't really understand and I think that I think the entire world aid doesn't quite understand why he met with Jeffrey Epstein so many times. And the question for me that's been the most interesting to explore is that if your gates are if you're a billionaire, you have armies of people whose job it is to sustain and polish and nurture your image.
Right.
Building Bill's brand is something I examined in the book, and yet you have despite having all these people, even a basic Google search right would reveal that Epstein by was a convicted sex offender and someone who perhaps wasn't the best kind of person from an optics standpoint for a billionaire with what Gates was trying to do to interact. So that was surprising to me. It was a failure lapse of judgment that I wouldn't expect. But it also ties back to the personality that.
Gates is We'll continue on this because I do agree that this is an interesting aspect of certainly his story that is still being told, but that you cover so much. We were to come back with Prita Dos her new book, Billionaire Nerd Savior King. You are listening and watching Bloomberg Business Week right here on Bloomberg Radio.
I want to get right back to Onoprida Dos. She's South Asia correspondent for The New York Times, her new book, Billionaire Nerd Savior King. Bill Gates in his Quest to Shape Our World. You were talking about Jeffrey Epstein just moments ago and the relationship that Bill Gates had with Jeffrey Epstein. And I got to tell you the parts in your book that focus on and I've gotten ad a lot of media attention over the last couple of weeks.
Just explain what you learned about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and why they found themselves having a relationship.
Yeah, So what happened.
My best reconstruction, based on my reporting and documents, is that in twenty ten, you had the Giving Pledge, which was this effort essentially a get out of the vote campaign by Gates Warren, Buffett and Milan of French Gates to get other billionaires to commit to pledge to commit half or more of their fortunes to charity. And at that time a lot of billionaires were very interested in
finding a way to put their money to use. Having the money is almost easier than figuring out how to give it away wisely, and so the Gates Foundation was very much set up to use billions of dollars and Gates was in the middle of this massive push toward polio eradication. He'd been the foundation, been working with other entities, and it was one of those times when Gates wanted
to raise a lot of money. So Epstein kind of being in these circles of influence and power, he's someone who kind of collects, you know, collected bits and pieces of information, used leverage wherever he could, and realized that there might be an opportunity for him to pitch something called donor advised fund, and he wrote in JP Morgan and Jim Morgan had like other another relationship with the Gates Foundation. So he looked at all of this, he
began pitching this idea for a donor advised fund. He reached out to people who he knew at the Gates Foundation, who you know, had an overlap with Gates of course, and began seeking an introduction. Now Gates took that introduction.
There was there.
He came and visited Epstein at his house the time, and then there was another meeting where there was a presentation Epstein had slides and everything. So that until then perhaps all well and good, But after that, the fact that he kept meeting with Epstein several times ostensibly to discuss philanthropy, and Gates has always said that he hasn't That was the only reason then that he was sorry for the lapse in judgment.
But it still.
Is a question for for Gates, essentially because he is perhaps the only person who would know why he kept going back and meeting with Epstein. There are people who say that Gates was enamored.
Of Epstein's lifestyle.
He did write to some employees and the Gates Foundation after saying that you know, he does have an adventurous, different lifestyle, but it's not for me. I'm not putting words into Gates's mouth, but that was essentially the point of what he was saying, and so clearly there was maybe amusement maybe surprise, maybe anticipation.
It's hard to say.
But again, coming back to the point I was making earlier, it is a surprising lapse in judgment for the people who work for him, but for Gates himself it's actually not that surprising, given that he does have a certain naivete when it comes to personal relationships.
Now, you said you didn't get to talk to Bill Gates right for the book.
No, I didn't. He turned down my request for an interview.
Did he Were you able to ask him any questions like write and get responses or no, nothing at all.
No.
So what happened was that it was interesting because I sent them detailed fact checking lists, both at Gates Ventures, which is a private firm, and the Gates Foundation back in January or February, months months before. They stalled in stonewalled and didn't acknowledge my emails, and at the end when I said you have to give me a comment,
they said it was hearsay. And then just weeks before we went to publication, they got back on some of the Epstein related points and they refuted and said that they could present documented evidence, and I asked for that, and they didn't provide anything. And the book went to print, and then the Daily Mail, of all the Daily Mail and the New York Post put out these tidbits from my book, and they were overblown and not entirely accurate,
but the Gates found. But then Gates is private firm then put out a statement saying that it was all wild allegations and that they presented me with documented evidence that I chose to ignore, which is not true.
Speaking of wild things that potentially could come up. I was joking at the top when I said the microchip vaccine stuff, but only half joking in the sense that these are real conspiracy theories about Bill Gates. Can you talk a little bit about where those come from and the idea of this quote unquote Davos elite that wants to control the world.
I think the fact that Gates was so prominent suddenly in everywhere, he was suddenly everywhere. He was talking about vaccines, he was sharing the stage with doctor Anthony Fauci, he was advocating, he was kind of out there everywhere. He couldn't miss him, which led a lot of people to wonder, and I speak to I have one person in the book who said, who made the point that you know, I had always thought of Gates as the Microsoft co founder,
and suddenly, why is this guy talking about vaccines? And so I think if you are grown to conspiracy theories, I think that was kind of the first signed for a lot of people that maybe Gates has some kind of vested interest, and you know, conspiracy theories obviously.
Take on a life of their own.
And I think there was a study, and don't quote me on this, but I think there's a study looking at the feasibility of having some information, you know, implanted into a person's under a person's skin, and it was an mit feasibility study and nothing came of it, but that led to this kind of big idea that somehow Gates was trying to you know, implant chips and people and kind of all manner of things.
Now I think for.
The vaccines, And you know, Gates was He's a rational guy. He's driven by evidence and science and tech, and I think he just didn't understand why there were people questioning what seemed to him very obvious steps. He couldn't understand being a personal target of the conspiracy theories.
We just have about forty five seconds left here. Your title billionaire nerd Savior King, which is the most appropriate as you finish your book in terms of which word really you would most closely identify with him, As I said, only got about forty.
Seconds today, it would be King.
He really kind of is on top of so many you know, I would say Savior King. Perhaps the billionaire is a fact, the nerd is a version of him back in the day, but today he's kind of on top of the world, sharing the stage with heads of state, and he is a savior of people in the global South with the Gates Foundation.
So I would say Savior King.
Very cool stuff.
Really enjoyed this and good luck with the book, and I'm really glad that we could get time with you and youre. Pritadas is South Asia correspondent for The New York Times and her new book is Billionaire Nerds Savior King, Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World.
That book is out today. Looking forward to that and that's no doubt about that. Probably going to hit our weekend podcasting broadcast.
Yeah, I think that's safe to say.