Ironically, I am typing this review using the product of Microsoft, for which Gates is probably most famous. Even someone using a computer manufactured by his great rival Steve Jobs will most likely be using a Microsoft package for their word processing and presentations. But ask someone about Bill Gates now, and they will also associate him with global vaccination programmes via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and, more specifically, the COVID vaccination programme. There is so much more to Bill Gates, though, and some of it is pure evil.
In his book, Gates of Hell, Daniel Jupp first points out how indescribably ugly Gates is. This may seem unkind and irrelevant, but Jupp reckons that his physical appearance largely accounts for his character. On the one hand, he is a ‘nerd’ and, on the other hand, he is intensely competitive, which, in later life, is expressed in being a bully.
Accusations of sexual misconduct with employees have dogged him for decades but have never been proven. He was associated with Jeffrey Epstein and a frequent visitor to his island hideaway, but accusations of sexual abuse and paedophilia have never been verified. Jupp places his association with Epstein—a proven sex offender—at the heart of his divorce from his wife of many years, Melinda. One may wonder what attracted her to the insanely rich and powerful Bill Gates, but, in her defence, they met early and had similar skill sets and ambitions.
Microsoft was built up through infamously aggressive business practices. What Gates wanted internally at Microsoft he got, and what he wanted outside of Microsoft was either bought or, with the exception of Apple, mercilessly destroyed. Within the company, slacking of any kind was not tolerated. Employees who fell ill were treated ruthlessly, as demonstrated by his sacking of one employee with cancer and another who had suffered a heart attack.
The destruction of the web browser Netscape was achieved by Microsoft, making its own browser Explorer available universally and free across nearly all personal computers. But Microsoft, through its dominance of the software industry, eventually ran afoul of antitrust legislation in the United States. Unusually for Gates, he lost. The company was ordered to break up into two separate entities, and the public perception of Microsoft plummeted. Unused to losing, Gates pondered the future.
Enter the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. Gates’ activities are now almost totally dedicated to the work of the foundation. Under the guise of distributing his wealth, Gates—at one point the richest man in the world—donated millions of dollars towards the work. He may no longer be the richest man in the world, but while giving away billions of dollars, he seems to have become no less poor. How does he do it?
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation exists, ostensibly, to make the world a better place. It funds health-related projects, principally vaccination programmes, food programmes, family planning programmes, and more recently climate-related projects. Gates may well genuinely believe in what he is doing and that it is for the good of humanity, but it is also a front. Gates becomes no poorer because he uses the charitable work of his foundation to gain access to world leaders and ingratiate himself with them. Where his projects require the wide-scale manufacture of products, for example, vaccines, he is inevitably a major shareholder in the companies that manufacture them. For Gates, his humanitarian work achieves two ends: popularity and profit.
Unfortunately for all of us, Gates takes precisely the same approach to his humanitarian work as he did to Microsoft. Essentially, he understands that he has to make some catastrophic mistakes and break a few things before a successful programme or product can emerge. This might work in the software industry; it does not work when lives are at stake.
Increasingly, he has turned his attention to the health of the planet. Under this umbrella, he now influences legislation and policy the world over regarding anything connected with issues of climate change and food production. Inexplicably, he is widely deemed an authority on these topics.
Naturally, his interest in climate change is more than academic. He is involved in a wide range of initiatives. Some of these are positively dangerous, such as plans to block out the sun as a measure to combat global warming. Towards that end, he funds geoengineering projects whereby substances are released into the atmosphere, which reduces the penetration of the sun’s rays to earth. Many believe these experiments are already underway, with some internet commentators associating Gates’ plans with so-called ‘chemtrails,’ namely the deliberate release of undisclosed substances into the air via airplanes. Whatever the truth may be about that, Gates is planning alarming initiatives that were the stuff of ‘conspiracy theories’ only a few minutes ago. And we can be sure that all of these projects will be pursued to the degree that they have the potential to profit Gates.
Gates owns more farmland than any other landowner in America, and he continues to acquire more. Quite why he owns this is not clear, but he is obsessed with livestock methane emissions and wants the world to move towards alternative forms of protein, such as laboratory-grown meat and insects. Gates seems unaware of how disgusting ordinary people find these notions, which they do, almost as much as his proposals to make fresh drinking water from human faeces. But, of course, Bill is not an ordinary person.
Changing agricultural practices is another of Gates’ more recent obsessions. He thinks the West must adopt ways of farming similar to those of developing countries, while Africa must adopt more western-style farming practices. There is nothing Gates sees without wanting to interfere with it. We already have evidence of how effective Gates is at influencing world leaders; certainly, he was backstage for the brutal treatment of Dutch farmers over the use of nitrogen-based fertilisers.
He has not given up on disease. One of his latest projects comprises his plan to release genetically modified male mosquitoes in an effort to eradicate mosquito-borne diseases. Mosquitoes are major killers in developing countries, and no doubt the project is based on good science. Part of the problem with such initiatives, however, is that they isolate a given problem from its wider context and other important considerations. We simply do not know what role mosquitoes play in our delicate ecosphere, but if Gates’s project materialises, we will soon find out.
While Gates can claim considerable expertise in programming and business, being self-taught in both areas, he is also self-taught on the topics of climate change and medical science. He simply does not understand that there is a limit to what can be self-taught. As they say about autodidacts, they do not know what they do not know. His lack of insight is forgivable, but what is unfathomable, other than on account of flattery and funding, is why so many world leaders trust him with the welfare of their citizens.
His model of business and philanthropy clearly works for him. His foundation has more influence on the world stage than many small to medium-sized states, and he remains fabulously wealthy. The POLITICO and WELT investigation into and special report on the COVID vaccine rollout showed that Gates is capable of holding great control over important international decisions, from those of accountable politicians to unaccountable groups such as GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation).
Jupp raises a question: are Gates’ activities underpinned by a desire for a global population cull? If so, does this motive lie behind the rollout of harmful vaccines, his plan to block out the sun, and his initiatives to stop further consumption of meat? The jury is still out. Strangely, Jupp does not mention in this book Gates’ remarkable proposal to cut down 70 million trees and bury them.
You may love Bill Gates or hate him. But if you read this book, you will struggle to love him any more or to hate him any less.
