White Lotus Season 2 was quite good if I can say that. Congratulations to Jennifer Coolidge on her Golden Globe. The Bernie Madoff special was also good. Tehran was suspenseful. The latest Avatar was good. My favorite entertainment experience recently was a Chris Rock/Dave Chappelle event. (as he drops the mic... or keyboard...)
You are a voter, a consumer, a giver and a worker. In every one of those roles you can help. Buying an electric car helps. There will be options to pay a bit extra to offset your travel emissions coming soon (I do this for all of my emissions and my family). We need support on climate from both parties in the US and in all countries. Staying hopeful is a good thing!
I had dinner with Warren on Sunday and he is doing well at age 93! He is incredibly wise. I am no longer on the board of Berkshire but he still shares a lot of advice with me and his generosity to all the Foundations he gives to including the Gates Foundation is incredible. We still play some bridge but not as much as we used to. He got me hooked on bridge and I play with some of his friends including some tournaments.
I have studied the Victorian Era in the UK and some of the great US Presidents most of all. I find the periods of scientific innovation fascinating. In terms of the best time to live though the current time is dramatically by far the best time to be alive - as one of my favorite authors Steven Pinker explains in several of his books.
I am reading the book "The Song of the Cell" by Sid Mukherjee. All of his books are excellent - right up there with Atul Gawande. I have a lot of books about China to help me figure out how we avoid a lose-lose relationship.
I have read most of what he has written except Infinite Jest. I have it on my shelf. If someone wants something great from David Foster Wallace look at his commencement speech called This is Water (Kenyon College 2005). It is profound. The movie on his book tour called The End of the Tour is also very good.
First being a grandfather. Second being a good friend and father. Third progress in health and climate innovation. Fourth helping to shape the AI advances in a positive way.
The key on climate is making the clean products as cheap as the dirty products in every area of emission - planes, concrete, meat etc... This is the only way we can ask all the countries in the world to change. If it costs a lot extra we won't succeed.
When I saw that kids were dying who could be saved for less than $1000 per life I knew that had to be the top priority for my giving back. There was almost no one funding work on diseases like malaria which was killing over a million kids a year then. We have made progress but it is still 400k and we are committed to get it to zero eventually.
Yes. I like to play around and code. The last time my code shipped in a Microsoft product was 1985 - so a long time ago. I can no longer threaten when I think a schedule is too long that "I will come in and code it over the weekend".
For people who want to go Vegan that is great but I don't think most people will do that. There are companies making "beef" in new ways and people working to still use cows but reduce the methane emissions. I have backed a number of innovators in this space including Beyond and Impossible and Memphis. I think eventually these products will be very good even though their share is small today.
I was CEO until 2000. I certainly know a lot now that I didn't back then. Two areas I would change would be our work in phone Operating systems (Android won) and trying to settle the antitrust lawsuit sooner.
I am surprised taxes have not been increased more. For example capital gains rates could be the same as ordinary income rates. I know things are tough for a lot of people.
The Terrapower reactor designs (there are 2) both use liquid sodium as the coolant and uranium as the fuel. We are making excellent progress although the Ukranian war meant our uranium fuel is delayed. The first reactor is being built in Wyoming and should be running by 2030. This can make a huge contribution to climate challenges since it will be low cost and super safe. I was just in West Virginia learning about their energy economy and hearing about projects there like the FORM battery factory (a BEV company) that was just committed.
AI is the big one. I don't think Web3 was that big or that metaverse stuff alone was revolutionary but AI is quite revolutionary.
Most of my time is on innovations like helping pregnant women know if they need to get to a hospital in advance (the ultrasound work I mentioned in my end of the year letter). Malnutrition and anemia and also important areas we see a lot of promise in right now.
Everything I own will be sold as money moves into the Foundation. In the meantime my investment group tries to invest in productive assets including farmland although that is less than 4% of the total.
I think we need more teachers and doctors not less. In the Foundation work the shortage of Doctors means most people never see a Doctor and they suffer because of that. We want class sizes to be smaller. Digital tools can help although their impact so far has been modest.
This is not correct. Even though neither I or the Foundation were involved in the license from Oxford to Astra-Zeneca, Astra-Zeneca did a strong job offering their help to any vaccine manufacturer who could make it. A great example is Serum who the Foundation funded and made over 2B vaccines which saved millions of lives.
Being rich can easily make you out of touch. The incentive to create new companies is still a good thing I think. Even if taxes go up I still wouldn't ban anyone from being worth a billion but that is just one opinion. I have been very lucky.
I own less than 1/4000 of the farmland in the US. I have invested in these farms to make them more productive and create more jobs. There isn't some grand scheme involved - in fact all these decisions are made by a professional investment team.
In terms of the very rich I think they should pay a lot more in taxes and they should give away their wealth over time. It has been very fulfilling for me and is my full time job.
It gives a glimpse of what is to come. I am impressed with this whole approach and the rate of innovation.
It's important to keep in mind life in poor countries is difficult right now. There are parts of the world where over 10% of the kids die before 5 and over 30% have malnutrition so their brains and bodies don't fully develop. Climate will slow down the progress we make on improving the human condition but I still believe we can avoid a terrible outcome. The pace of innovation is really picking up even though we won't make the current timelines or avoid going over 1.5.
I have only been to Scotland 5 times I think. All of the visits have been great. The Foundation does a lot of the livestock work we do there with great partners. We have done a lot for farmers who keep cows and chickens (and sheep and goats) in poor countries using the vaccines and other tools created by the partners there.
My favorite bands include U2 - I loved Bono's recent book and he is a good friend (Ok - they are from Ireland - I don't have a particular scottish band in mind since bagpipes don't make my top 10).
Amazingly Chicken Tikka Masala is from Scotland even though it is considered an Indian dish (and mostly eaten there and in Indian restaurants!)
I really needed to set aside time to read new ideas when I was CEO at Microsoft since the day to day issues meant I would fall behind if I didn't. Now I mix my learning sessions into my schedule on a regular basis since the day to day demands are not like being the CEO of Microsoft. I love the mix of things I get to do between travelling and seeing work in action and then meeting with scientists/engineers to figure out how to innovate in climate or software.
I have a Samsung Fold 4 which JY Lee the Chairman of Samsung gave me when I saw him in South Korea to update my Fold 3. Of course I use Outlook and a lot of Microsoft software on it. The screen size means I don't use a tablet but just the phone and my portable PC - a Windows machine.
Microsoft involves me in some of the research and product plans. I really enjoy working with Satya and his teams. I am not up to date on their hardware roadmap. My desktop PC is Windows Surface Studio which is great. I also love the whiteboard Surface Hub and we have a lot of those in the office.
I think you mostly help kids by setting a good example and giving them time when they want it. I hope to get lots of time with whatever grandchildren I have sharing my fascination with the world. A grandchild does make you think about how we make sure the future is better - politics, health, climate, etc..
I am quite impressed with the rate of improvement in these AIs. I think they will have a huge impact. Thinking of it in the Gates Foundation context we want to have tutors that help kids learn math and stay interested. We want medical help for people in Africa who can't access a Doctor. I still work with Microsoft some so I am following this very closely.
I hope you geek out about the periodic table as much as I do. Happy reading!
One is still my favorite U2 song.
I’m a big fan of President Lincoln and I’ve collected several Lincoln-related materials, including a handwritten copy of his victory speech from the 1860 presidential election.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was a close second for me. I re-read it many times as a kid!
Read the kinds of books you loved as a kid. I was a major science fiction nerd growing up. Isaac Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy is one of my favorite series, and lately I’ve found myself drawn back to the genre.
Yes, just a pickler trying to improve his game.
This is great advice, thanks! It’s something I’ve been trying to work on in tennis – and now pickleball. Also Robert Elliot is a fantastic pickler.
“Rudder arm” is a new term for me but that makes sense.
We don’t have to live in fear of another global catastrophe. When I sat down to write my recent book, my goal was to create a concrete list of steps the world could take to prevent the next pandemic.
Exciting progress. Vaccines that address variants are crucial to ending this pandemic.
We are still working on this. At first the project was a US-China joint venture but the US cancelled that. So now we are building the demo reactor in Wyoming where a coal plant is closing. It is very promising in terms of the cost and safety advances. If things go well a lot of these reactors will help solve climate change. Eventually we want reactors globally but the first ones will be in the US even though competing with natural gas electricity is hard here.
The Foundation has a lot of Medical experts. It takes a huge range of skills to do things like Malaria eradication or Covid vaccines and therapeutics. I listen to the experts on specific medical advice. The system to prevent pandemics will require a lot more than just doctors so I wrote a book to start the discussion of what it should look like.
The key is to be able to make things like electricity, steel, cement and meat without any emissions but at a cost equal or lower than today's cost. My efforts at Breakthrough Energy is to fund the innovators and help them scale up. I am optimistic because the progress on innovation in the last 3 years with the companies that have been funded is going very well.
Our Foundation is funding the low cost vaccine manufacturers to do mRNA vaccines. They used other platforms for pandemic vaccines but in the future we will make sure they can do mRNA as well. We are funding mRNA to be used for HIV and Malaria.
All the steps to get Covid vaccines out were done by the summer of 2020 and it lead to huge scaling up to put us in the oversupply situation we are in today. With the right technologies we can do it a lot faster and more equitably in the future.
Although those lawsuits were tough I have been super lucky in my life and I had a good team of people working with me to help get them settled and move ahead.
Astra-Zeneca not only allowed people to copy - they helped other companies copy it. We helped fund Serum to make 1.4B of the A-Z vaccine. Because of efforts like this supply is not longer the limiting factor.
I never traded in Gamestop long or short.
I was stunned when I found out that a life could be saved for under $1000. This came when I read about what kids die of including the 1993 World Development report. So our Foundation (supported by Warren Buffett's incredible generosity) prioritized this.
The success of our work in Global Health is well beyond what I would have expected.
I do work with other philanthropists a lot including through the Giving Pledge where they can learn and be encouraged to be bold.
For some high value crops it can work. For the cereal crops like wheat, rice and maize it is unlikely to ever be economic. We can improve seeds for all crops a lot to increase productivity - this is a key investment to help reduce the problems caused by climate change.
A smaller chair than I could do at age 30... Pretty small now.
I try to stay fit playing a lot of tennis.
I must be wearing the wrong kind of tin foil hat because it doesn't work for me.
The ideal thing is to read a lot and hopefully find a skill you enjoy that can have impact. For some that means being great at science or engineering. For some it means being a great communicator or politician. For some it means being a nurse or a doctor. The opportunity to learn is better today than ever before.
There is nuclear fission. If it can solve the cost, safety and waste concerns it can make a massive contribution to solving climate change. I am biased because I have been investing over a billion in this starting over a decade ago.
Also promising is nuclear fusion. It is less clear if we will succeed but it has less safety and waste issues if it works.
So I am hopeful nuclear will improve and be a huge help for climate.
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