The bill gates problem, p.50
The Bill Gates Problem, page 50
more than fifty million dollars: Microsoft, DEF 14A, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, October 4, 2006. Note: SEC documents report that Microsoft “owns 44.9% of ISF’s outstanding Class A Units and Mr. Gates’ investment company owns 18.7% of ISF’s outstanding Class A Units and one ISF Class D Unit.” It’s possible that Bill Gates and Microsoft both have other investments in IV. Forbes reported in 2018 that a Microsoft subsidiary in Ireland wrote down a more than $130 million investment in a fund associated with IV. Nathan Vardi, “After 10 Years, Nathan Myhrvold’s $3 Billion of Private Equity Funds Show Big Losses,” Forbes, June 1, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2018/06/01/after-10-years-nathan-myhrvolds-3-billion-of-private-equity-funds-show-big-losses/.
throw around his intellectual weight: Note: In 2013, 60 Minutes briefly reported on Bill Gates’s work with IV, “where he is both an investor and an inventor,” according to the program; “Bill Gates, 2.0,” 60 Minutes, CBS, aired July 28, 2013, 4:00, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPy0nWYYCFg.
protecting players against concussions: Taylor Soper, “Bill Gates and Intellectual Ventures Attempt to Patent a High-Tech Football Helmet,” GeekWire, January 11, 2017, https://www.geekwire.com/2017/bill-gates-intellectual-ventures-attempt-patent-high-tech-football-helmet/.
“detecting and classifying people”: Bill Gates’s name is attached to a wide array of patents, many of them owned by Microsoft and apparently aimed at harvesting data from people’s digital identities—“personal data mining,” “determining influencers,” and “rewarding independent influencers.” Another one, straight out of Minority Report, is described as “sensors for collecting information about a customer or group of customers as they move through” a store, along with “face recognition, pose recognition, transaction recognition, and biometric sensing,” with the goal of creating “advertisements in realtime in retail establishments.” U.S. Patents 20170053190-A1, 7930197-B2, 8290973-B2, 9135657-B2, and 20080004950-A1.
looking out for the little guy: Ira Glass and Zoe Chace, “When Patents Attack … Part Two!” Episode 496, This American Life, NPR, May 31, 2013, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/496/when-patents-attack-part-two.
patent litigation zeitgeist had unleashed: Glass and Chace, “When Patents Attack … Part Two!”
“We own tons of patents”: Glass, Blumberg, and Sydell, “When Patents Attack!”
the website noted: Intellectual Ventures, “What We Do,” https://web.archive.org/web/20190605202401/https://www.intellectualventures.com/what-we-do/global-good-fund/our-work.
“controlled subsidiary”: This $500 million, notably, did not come through charitable grants from the Gates Foundation, but rather through transfers from the Gates Foundation’s endowment. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, 990-PF, Statement 12, Transfers to Controlled Entities, 2010–2020. Note: In 2010, the annual tax filing of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust reports receiving a donation of intellectual property valued at $11,084,733, apparently a gift from Bill Gates. It also reports transferring to Global Good “capital contributions of cash and intellectual property” worth more than $16 million. It’s not clear if these two transactions of intellectual property are related.
the project was a for-profit business: Todd Bishop, “A Feisty Nathan Myhrvold Defends His Quest for ‘Global Good,’” GeekWire, August 10, 2012, https://www.geekwire.com/2012/feisty-nathan-myhrvold-defends-quest-global-good/.
whoever runs Global Good: Bishop, “A Feisty Nathan Myhrvold.”
From its murky origins: “IV’s Global Good Fund: A Legacy of Impact Invention,” September 2, 2020, https://www.intellectualventures.com/buzz/insights/ivs-global-good-fund-a-legacy-of-impact-invention.
claims to reduce smoke: “Cleaner, More Efficient Cooking: Global Good Embeds Technology into Jet Flame Cookstove,” Intellectual Ventures, October 30, 2019, https://www.intellectualventures.com/buzz/insights/helping-families-with-cleaner-efficient-cooking; “Jet-Flame—Turn Your Fire into a Jet!” Jet-Flame, n.d., https://www.jet-flame.com/.
transporting bull semen: “IV’s Global Good Fund: A Legacy of Impact Invention.”
infant biometric project: “Global Good Fund, Element to Develop Biometric ID Tool for Infants and Children—Biometric Update,” n.d., https://www.biometricupdate.com/201711/global-good-fund-element-to-develop-biometric-id-tool-for-infants-and-children. Note: The Gates Foundation has funded other similar projects, like an infant biometric program by the University of California San Diego; see “Researchers Receive $2.4 Million from Gates Foundation for Infant Vaccination Identification,” UC San Diego Today, November 8, 2016, https://today.ucsd.edu/story/researchers_receive_2.4_million_from_gates_foundation_for_infant_vaccinatio.
“Making Markets Work for the Poor”: Price, “Eyes Wide Open,” 35.
“critical intellectual property”: Price, “Eyes Wide Open,” 32.
“convertible notes”: Price, “Eyes Wide Open,” 33.
“lowering the company’s appeal”: Price, “Eyes Wide Open,” 33.
“displace or substitute”: “Reflecting on the Evolution of the Foundation: A Q&A with Mark Suzman,” Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, February 4, 2022, https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/articles/evolution-of-the-foundation-qa-mark-suzman.
“As Zyomyx’s largest equity holder”: Price, “Eyes Wide Open,” 34.
“Probability of success is low”: Price, “Eyes Wide Open,” 34.
acquired dozens of patents (and patent applications): U.S. Patent Reel, Frame 040775/0094, December 30, 2015, Assignment of Patents from Zyomyx to Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Stemcell Technologies: U.S. Patents 7998696, 8304203, and 8765391, Assignment of Patents from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to Stemcell Technologies Canada, Reel/Frame 040405/0749, May 31, 2016.
a 2019 charitable grant: The Gates Foundation’s grant records show a $2.9 million donation to Stemcell Technologies “to develop optimized methods for the generation of antibody producing B-cells from stem cells to be used to protect against infectious diseases in the developing world.”
drug discovery platform: David Bank and Dennis Price, “Returns on Investment: How a Broad Bet on a Biotech Company Paid Off in Promising Drugs for Neglected Diseases,” Making Markets Work for the Poor, Supplement, Stanford Social Innovation Review (Summer 2016): 35–36.
patent records show: Amrutha Penumudi, “Pfizer to Buy Anacor in $5.2 Billion Deal for Access to Eczema Gel,” Reuters, May 16, 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-anacor-pharma-m-a-pfizer-analysis-idUSKCN0Y7143; U.S. Patents, Reel/Frame 050856/0936, 050867/0447, 050856/0921, 050863/0578, 052454/0630, 052454/0582, 052456/0805, and 052456/0761, Assignment of Patents from Anacor to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
ability to “license” the products: Tracking ownership of patents is difficult because patent holders notoriously use shell and holding companies to reduce transparency about ownership. This was an important part of the This American Life story, which reported on the layers of obfuscation surrounding IV’s financial interest in patents.
Gates Ventures: SEC filings show that Gates Ventures has taken stakes in companies like Exicure; see Exicure, Inc., Schedule 13G, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, October 5, 2017, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1580115/000110465917061162/a17-22926_1sc13g.htm.
Who else might benefit?: “Research Priorities,” Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, n.d., https://www.gatesmri.org/research-priorities/.
licenses with GSK and Merck: Charles Wells, “What Does the Future Look Like for TB Care?,” Interview by Emily Henderson, News-Medical.net, August 5, 2022, https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220805/What-does-the-future-look-like-for-TB-care.aspx; “Merck and the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute Announce Licensing Agreement for Novel Tuberculosis Antibiotic Candidates,” Merck.
Big Pharma alumni: “About Us,” Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, https://www.gatesmri.org/about-us/. See profiles of Emilio Emini, Manfred Lauchart, and Taryn Rogalski-Salter.
taking technology from grantees: In one case that we can see, the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute took over development of a malaria drug in what began as a charitable partnership between the Gates Foundation and a private company, Atreca. Under the agreement, detailed in SEC filings, Gates MRI acquired “commercial rights in Gavi-eligible countries located in malaria-endemic regions of the world, while Atreca will retain commercial rights in the U.S., Europe and parts of Asia.” It’s not clear that this is an example of Gates exercising its global access agreement. See Atreca, Form 8-K, Ex.99.1, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, November 2, 2021, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1532346/000117184321007383/exh_991.htm.
bilking American consumers: “DeFazio, Doggett Lead Members in Urging HHS to Lower Cost of Prostate Cancer Drug,” Press Release, February 8, 2022, website of United States Congressman Peter DeFazio, https://web.archive.org/web/20220211152659/https://defazio.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/defazio-doggett-lead-members-in-urging-hhs-to-lower-cost-of-prostate.
shore of Lake Washington: Madeline Stone and Matt Weinberger, “19 Crazy Facts About Bill Gates’ $127 Million Mansion,” Business Insider, December 7, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/crazy-facts-about-bill-gates-house-2016-11.
consumer advocate Ralph Nader: “Appraising Microsoft I: Real Audio of the November 13–14 1997 Appraising Microsoft Presentations,” November 13–14, 1997, http://www.appraising-microsoft.org/1st.html; “Nader Responds to Microsoft Letter,” November 13, 1997, http://www.appraising-microsoft.org/rnstatemt.html.
manufacturer named Cipla: Brian Till, “How Drug Companies Keep Medicine out of Reach,” Atlantic, May 15, 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/how-drug-companies-keep-medicine-out-of-reach/275853/.
treatment for HIV: Katherine Eban, “How an Indian Tycoon Fought Big Pharma to Sell AIDS Drugs for $1 a Day,” Quartz, July 15, 2019, https://qz.com/india/1666032/how-indian-pharma-giant-cipla-made-aids-drugs-affordable/.
thirteen thousand–word time line: “Microsoft, Gates Foundation Timeline,” Knowledge Ecology International (blog), November 29, 2010, https://www.keionline.org/microsoft-timeline.
High-level intergovernmental meetings: World Health Organization, Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property, List of Participants, April 28, 2008, https://apps.who.int/gb/PHI/pdf/igwg2/PHI_IGWG2_DIV2_REV2.pdf.
A half-trillion dollars each year: David Muoio, “Nationwide Drug Spending Grew 7.7% in 2021, Will Increase Another 4%-6% in 2022,” FierceHealthcare, April 12, 2022, https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/finance/nationwide-drug-spending-grew-77-2021-will-increase-another-4-6-2022.
worked with pharma giant Novartis: Martin Enserink, “Another Global Health Fund? Here’s Why,” Science, May 19, 2010, https://www.science.org/content/article/another-global-health-fund-heres-why.
No R&D treaty has been enacted: Soumya Swaminathan et al., “Reboot Biomedical R&D in the Global Public Interest,” Nature 602, no. 7896 (February 2022): 207–10, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00324-y.
CHAPTER 5: TRANSPARENCY
glass-heavy design: “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,” NBBJ, https://www.nbbj.com/work/bill-and-melinda-gates-foundation.
headquarters’ opening in 2011: Kristi Helm, “The New Gates Foundation Headquarters Reflects Charity’s Roots—and Reach,” Seattle Times, May 21, 2011.
the architecture’s openness: Note: Curiously, the New York Times review of the building noted that the foundation had also banned whispering inside the headquarters. Lawrence W. Cheek, “New Office Designs Offer Room to Roam and to Think,” New York Times, March 17, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/business/new-office-designs-offer-room-to-roam-and-to-think.html?ref=business.
“committed to being open”: Bill and Melinda Gates, “10 Tough Questions We Get Asked,” GatesNotes, n.d., https://www.gatesnotes.com/2018-Annual-Letter.
“part of any grant agreement”: David Bank, who runs the media site ImpactAlpha, reports having signed a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) when he worked with the foundation on a reporting project. David Bank, “What Went Wrong in Gates Foundation Investment in $1 Billion Healthcare Fund for 21st-Century Megacities?,” Medium (blog), June 16, 2018, https://medium.com/@davidmbank/abraaj-group-liquidation-tests-champions-of-sustainable-development-goal-3-73ea53728669.
confidentiality agreements: Gabriel Sherman, Nick Bilton, and Emily Jane Fox, “Bill and Melinda Gates’s Epic Divorce Saga Enters Its Next Phase,” Vanity Fair, June 7, 2021, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/bill-and-melinda-gates-divorce-saga-next-phase.
standard practice to require them to sign: Das, Flitter, and Kulish, “A Culture of Fear at the Firm That Manages Bill Gates’s Fortune.”
“she stays private”: O. Casey Corr, “Melinda French Gates: A Microsoft Mystery—She Married High-Profile Bill Gates, but Wants Her Life Kept Private,” Seattle Times, June 4, 1995, https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19950604&slug=2124492. Note: The state of Washington, in 2022, issued new rules limiting the use of nondisclosure agreements in the workplace to protect whistleblowers and the ability of employees to speak out about waste, fraud, and abuse. Several former foundation employees directed me to the rules, unsure what they meant for the NDAs the foundation uses. Amy Rolph, “Most NDAs Are Now Outlawed in Washington State. Will Whistleblowers Speak Up?,” GeekWire, July 19, 2022, https://www.geekwire.com/2022/most-ndas-are-now-outlawed-in-washington-state-will-whistleblowers-speak-up/.
“mechanism of public accountability”: Friedman and Sunderland, “How to Fix the Gates Foundation.”
scroll through page after page: Before I began my first investigation into the Gates Foundation, I contacted them to see if they would give me an Excel spreadsheet containing all their charitable grants—as an alternative to using their poorly designed online grant database. Having all the grants in one spreadsheet would have allowed me to do sophisticated analyses—such as ranking top donors, top destinations of funding, and so on. I pestered the foundation for months, making it absolutely clear that if they didn’t give me the spreadsheet, I would create my own from available records. The foundation finally relented and sent the spreadsheet by email—with orders that I not share it with anybody. After I began publishing my investigations, the foundation made the spreadsheet publicly available for all users on their website. The foundation also stopped communicating with me.
record of giving grant money: Scott Jaschik, “A Tool to Compare Colleges,” Inside Higher Ed, November 4, 2021. Note: After I contacted the author, the outlet corrected the article, adding a financial disclosure about its ties to Gates. See Web archive at https://web.archive.org/web/20211104085628/https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/11/04/gates-foundation-effort-releases-new-tool-compare-colleges.
James Bond operation: “Our Process,” Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change (blog), n.d., https://cabc.org.za/our-process/.
shrouded in so much secrecy: The Gates-funded project, during the time it was disclosed on CABC’s website, was briefly described as working on “neutralising strategies to win over those who are vaccine hesitant.” This may sound noncontroversial, but without more details, it is not possible to understand the scope, meaning, impact, or consequences of the project. Perhaps more importantly, the lack of transparency means there is no way to verify Gates’s money was really used for this purpose, or whether it might have also been used on other topics to advance the foundation’s agenda.
“grantee technical assistance”: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Statement 5, 706, IRS 990 filing for period ending December 2019.
674 contracts: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Line 16c, column d, Part I; also Part VII, IRS 990, 2013.
10 percent of the foundation’s entire expenses: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Line 26, column d, Part I, IRS 990, 2013.
five largest contracts: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Part VII, IRS 990, 2013.
not a charitable grant: “The Chronicle of Higher Education and the Gates Foundation,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 14, 2013, https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-chronicle-of-higher-education-and-the-gates-foundation/.
“WHO’s website is incomplete”: Julia Belluz and Marine Buissonniere, “McKinsey Infiltrated the World of Global Public Health. Here’s How,” Vox, December 13, 2019, https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/12/13/21004456/bill-gates-mckinsey-global-public-health-bcg. Note: One specific Gates-funded McKinsey effort sought to evaluate a fund-raising scheme for Unitaid—asking airline passengers to make small donations when purchasing tickets. McKinsey projected $1 billion in new annual revenues from the project. Unitaid set aside tens of millions of dollars to get the program up and running. The project returned only $14,000.
to other foundations: Gates, for example, is the second-largest all-time funder of the United Nations Foundation, having awarded it $380 million. UNF then donates money to a variety of groups. It publishes an annual tax filing showing some of the recipients—but not all and not in a way that allows us to see which funds came from the Gates Foundation. In total, the Gates Foundation has donated close to $7 billion to organizations with the word foundation in their name.
“who in turn fund others”: Again, in the early days of my reporting, the foundation occasionally provided email responses to some questions.
