'No one elected tech leaders. We'll see what comes of it': Bill Gates on trauma, autism and Musk in power

On the release of his first memoir, the Microsoft founder tells The National why the world should listen to the advice of tech magnates on AI, but remain cautious about their influence

Bill Gates in 1973. His memoir tells the story of his early years up to 1978, when Microsoft was on the cusp of global success. Photo: Lakeside School

Gates was arrested for a traffic offence in 1977 in New Mexico. He writes about brief dabbles with drugs and a love of driving his 1971 Porsche 911. Getty images

Gates in 1983. He tells of how he is likely to be on the autistic spectrum. Getty Images

Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1984 in Seattle. Getty images

Gates demonstrates Microsoft's Windows 95 program from his car before a press conference in Paris. AFP

Gates with The Tonight Show host Jay Leno at the launch of Windows 95 in Redmond, Washington. Reuters

Source Code, Bill Gates' first memoir and "origin story", begins like a childhood Hollywood adventure, tinged with the sun-drenched, sepia tones of the 1960s.

His Goonies-like gang of maths club friends take off into the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest for days at a time; no parents, no mobile phones. A young Gates sneaks out of his parents home at night and cycles to the computer lab to work like a "monkey with a hammer" on early testing and code writing.

In his neighbourhood, the dads are proud military veterans and the management backbone of the booming Seattle postwar economy. A rich cast of side characters includes a friend's mother who was a French resistance agent in the war. The Jetsons is the latest hit on TV, and news anchor Walter Cronkite is the most trusted man in America.

AI is going to be very competitive. I don't think we'll have a situation where one company controls things... that they'll be able to maintain very high prices

Bill Gates

This idyllic upbringing, in a time of rapid economic growth and hope, with a law firm partner father and a mother on the board of companies, appears at odds with today's divided US. Many Americans are nostalgic about the postwar era. But Gates cautions that the strife of that time is often overlooked.

"We have John F Kennedy killed in '63. We have Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King killed in 1968. We have the Vietnam War. There's inner-city riots," he says in a call with journalists, including The National.

"I'm not in any way downplaying the challenges that the US faces today in terms of the political divide. But if you really step back and say, you know, are people better off? I still maintain a very positive view that life is better today. And yet, if we don't focus on solving the problems, it won't get better in the way that it should."

Fast-forward to 2025 and there are extraordinary events playing out in America. SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk has a job in government and a role advising US President Donald Trump – even living in his Mar-a-Lago home before the inauguration. Do tech tycoons have too much influence?

"You know, we don't know how much political power tech leaders will have," Gates tells The National. "The fact that politicians meet with them and listen to them, I think that's fine. You know, I went down and had dinner with Trump – not like Elon, who's spent massive time there. But because AI is a big change-agent, I do think making sure political leaders understand AI ... within government, to streamline government, there's a lot of potential there.

Musk and Trump

Elon Musk has weighed in on far-right debates in other western countries. AFP

"And sadly, warfare changes things quite a bit as well. That's not necessarily a good thing."

Speaking more broadly about the influence of tech tycoons, Gates adds: "You can take this too far, you know. Nobody elected tech leaders. So we'll see what comes out of it."

Gates is cautious when asked about Trump and Musk, though in a subsequent interview with the Sunday Times he said it was "insane" that Musk has weighed in on far-right debates in the UK and Germany about "Asian grooming gangs" and migration policy.

Asked more broadly about Musk, Gates hopes the X owner will eventually spend more time on philanthropy, to which the Microsoft founder has devoted his later life. "I hope someday he'll focus on that, do a great job on that," he says.

On artificial intelligence

Building on that, there is a risk that AI will place even greater power in the hands of a few tech titans. At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, business elites spoke about whether there will be a light switch moment for AI, and if 2025 will be that year. They also spoke about high costs, with business users, in particular, finding they are charged per click for the latest tools.

But Gates says AI is too big to be contained. Chinese tech company DeepSeek has just shown it can develop AI assistant tools using fewer of the pricey Nvidia chips than anyone thought possible.

"AI is going to be very competitive. And I think electronic cars are going to be very competitive," Gates says. "I don't think we'll have a situation here where one company is so far ahead or controls things, that they'll be able to slow down the innovation or maintain very high prices. Just like the internet itself, where people thought, 'Oh, you know, a few companies will control that' – no, I think AI will be very competitive. We even see today, the way that the stuff is priced, as being very aggressive."

Early tragedies

Gates paints an idyllic portrait of his early years, aware of his affluent upbringing, and reflects on his fortune in a country that was still racially segregated at the time. He repeatedly touches on conflict with parents and teachers, but his hurdles in life are limited to fighting for access to the handful of computers available.

This age of innocence is starkly interrupted when his closest friend, Kent Evans, a lanky kid with a briefcase and a "mouth full of orthodontia", falls and dies in a climbing accident. He was so smart, Gates says, he would have surely joined him at Microsoft or made his own mark on the world.

Kent Evans, Bill Gates' closest childhood friend who died aged 17. Photo: Evans Family

That such a close friend of the world's one-time richest man died so young has been spoken about before. But in Source Code, Gates puts into perspective how significant this life event was, referring to Kent by name more than 182 times in the 300-page book.

"Kent had already had a profound effect on who I was. Kent helped give me direction, setting me on the course of defining who I wanted to become," he writes. "I didn’t have an answer to that yet, but it would drive many of the decisions that followed. Kent at school. Kent typing into the terminal, looking up at me. The two of us on the phone. Call you when I get back. I imagined the mountain and him falling."

The book is tinged with tragedies. The same year, two teachers, including his maths tutor Bob Haig, died in a light aircraft accident. The memoir begins in the late 1950s and ends in 1978, when Microsoft was just emerging. So it does not include the deaths of Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder who died from complications linked to cancer in 2018, and close friend and early Microsoft programmer Ric Weiland, who died by suicide in 2006.

Neurodiversity and autism

At the end of his memoir, Gates mentions that, were he to be growing up today, he would probably be diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum. Gates, who it is said can recall the number plates of all of his early Microsoft employees and rarely makes eye contact when he speaks, has many of the cues of someone on the spectrum. But he says it is more complex than a simple diagnosis.

"My social skills were slower to develop and less natural than the average kid," he tells The National. "Although my ability to talk to adults and get them talking about what they knew and explain things to me, I was much, much better at that. And over time, I do develop enough to hire people and run a company, which has a lot of social engagement and is fairly key to that.

"But my behaviour was strange enough that sometimes I had a teacher say that I should be pushed back in school, another teacher say that I should be pushed ahead in school. So the adults were a little confused about my mix of skills, and I had some tension with my mum about pushing back on her disciplinary things."

Today, there is clearly far better treatment and understanding of neurodiversity. Technology companies have long been the most adept at channelling such mental "superpower" abilities into cutting edge work. "I do think the world's a little better at recognising kind of that learning pattern," he says.

Rock 'n' roll times

Bill Gates was arrested for a traffic offence in 1977 in New Mexico. Getty Images

In public consciousness, Gates does not have the persona of someone who likes to party, but he is led astray at various points. "It started with Scotch. Really cheap Scotch that Paul [Allen] brought to the computer room. He got me drunk for the first time, so drunk I threw up and passed out that night in the Lakeside teachers’ lounge."

In those days, he rarely washed and ate Tang powdered drink mix straight from the jar until his tongue turned orange. He recalls: “I broke my record for sustained work that spring, once not leaving the underground [lab] for nearly 100 hours straight. That meant not showering and hardly eating for nearly four days.”

Gates appears to relish recounting his time tearing up and down the west coast in a Porsche 911 – he was arrested in 1977 for a traffic offence. His Albuquerque, New Mexico, police mugshot was later said to have been used as a template for an Outlook mail.

On run-ins with friends, parents - and everyone else

Throughout much of the book, Gates is battling with everyone around him, from parents, teachers, college professors and friends, to early companies that partnered with Microsoft. An early legal fight with one company is particularly exacting.

Gates details his difficulties with his parents, which got to the point that they attended parent effectiveness classes at their local church. It took a toll on his parents and sisters.

Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1984. Getty Images

He writes of his sister: "I'm ashamed to hear Kristi's memories of this time, how my behaviour sucked up so much of my mother's energy, there was little left over for her."

Allen wrote about how ruthless Gates could be in his 2011 memoir. Gates famously squeezed Allen for a greater share of Microsoft and the two men fell out for many years, before later reconciling. "I'd say there's less fireworks than you'd expect," Gates tells The National, and laughs when asked whether we can expect more drama in the two further planned memoirs.

On changing the world

Gates now spends most of his time running the Gates Foundation, previously the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, until their divorce in 2021. This includes work on diseases such as polio and rare tropical illnesses that have been low priorities for some authorities. He found a keen partner in the Abu Dhabi ruling family and has a long-standing partnership with the emirate called Reaching the Last Mile.

He is optimistic about the future of philanthropy and humanitarian aid, at a time when devastating wars have sorely tested global co-operation and a new US president has pledged to slash foreign assistance.

"I really believe that we'll finish the eradication of polio. And I really believe, although it'll take maybe 20 more years, that we can cut childhood deaths in half again," he tells The National. "We'll have to solve a lot of diseases, do a much better job on malnutrition. And so we're smarter today than ever."

What about mankind's ability to wage terrible wars? "We can still make big mistakes. How do we make sure that nuclear weapons don't get used? How do we make sure that our understanding of biology doesn't lead to some type of bioterrorism?" he asks. "There'll be pandemics in the future that can be naturally caused. And did we learn what we needed to, so that if the next one is way more serious in terms of the fatality rate, would we actually be ready for that and do the right thing?

"There are plenty of things to worry about, including all sorts of polarisation that not only the US, but certainly the US, is experiencing. But still, I'd say this is the best time in the world to be born. And I do think that human ingenuity will help us overcome even climate change and be ready for pandemics. It's clear we can."