2025-01-30
21 分钟The Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist is taking a break from the future to examine his past — and mulling where the billionaires now fit in.
Hi, I'm David Streitfeld, and since the 1990s,
I've been covering Silicon Valley and in particular, the people it made wealthy.
We saw some of the richest men in tech standing right
behind President Trump at his inauguration ceremony.
Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk.
A few years ago, Silicon Valley was hostile to Trump.
Now, starting with those three billionaires, much of the tech leadership is all in.
But not all tech billionaires belong in this new club.
One prominent outlier is Bill Gates.
Getting an audience with Bill Gates, or really any billionaire these days,
is like going to see the Pope.
You have been accorded a rare opportunity.
They don't have to do it.
But I met with Gates in early January,
and the reason for our conversation was a memoir that Gates has coming out next week.
In normal times, 90% of the story I'm about to read,
you would have been focused on the contents of the book,
which is mostly about Gates's childhood and his difficult relationship with his mother.
But considering our current political climate, what I really wanted to ask him was,
what does he think about what his fellow tech billionaires are doing?