Astral Codex Ten

USAID

6 min read

USAID

Article

USAID is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between January 18, 2024 and January 23, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “help get USAID to cancel a Wuhan-style “search for maximally dangerous viruses’” study”; “USAID is not, itself, a charity. It is an organization that funds other charities”; “higher than the average USAID charity… USAID programs like PEPFAR have saved millions of lives”. It most often appears alongside Elon Musk, Trump, Bryan Caplan.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: January 18, 2024
  • Last seen: January 23, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Links For January 2024
January 18, 2024 · Original source
27: Back in November I tried to list some of effective altruism’s accomplishments. Now the EA Forum has a more official list of some of what EA did in 2023, including help convince the WHO to speed up malaria vaccines, help convince the USDA to approve cultivated (ie lab-grown) meat, and help get USAID to cancel a Wuhan-style “search for maximally dangerous viruses’” study.
Inline links: I tried to list, a more official list
Contra MR On Charity Regrants
May 22, 2025 · Original source
USAID is not, itself, a charity. It is an organization that funds other charities. Cowen/Rubio’s claim that “only 12% goes [directly] to recipients” is false, because 0% goes directly to recipients, because USAID is not set up in a way where this even makes sense. All USAID money goes through other charities. The 12% number seems to be the amount that goes through foreign organizations (including charities, charitable government programs, and charitably-minded forprofits), with the other 88% going through charities based in the US.
There are various reasons why USAID works with more US nonprofits than local nonprofits. These include fears that local nonprofits would be corrupt or inefficient, compliance issues, and Congressional mandates (for example, some programs involving food are required to source it from US farmers and US companies). Before the Trump cuts, USAID was working on ways to find and use more local partners, but this was a slow and difficult process. The same people who cry corruption when USAID works through US charities would definitely cry corruption if they worked through a foreign charity that turned out to be less than scrupulously honest. How many staff do you think it takes to prove that a hospital in Burkina Faso where nobody speaks English is definitely on the level? Is it really efficient for USAID to have all of these staff in house, for every hospital, for every cause area?
Inline links: working on ways
The organizations that accept USAID money take an overhead averaging ~30%1, then pass the rest onto recipients, or to even smaller, even more local organizations that take smaller overheads and pass it on to recipients. Overheads pay for salaries, facilities, compliance costs, and audits to make sure the money is reaching its intended targets. You will never have (and would not want) an overhead of zero.
Inline links: 1
Sorry, I Still Think MR Is Wrong About USAID
May 29, 2025 · Original source
Scott takes me to be endorsing Rubio’s claim that the third-party NGOs simply pocket the money. In reality my fact check with o3 found (correctly) that the money was “channelled through” the NGOs, not pocketed. Scott lumps my claim together with Rubio’s as if we were saying the same thing. My very next words (“I do understand that not all third party allocations are wasteful…”) show a clear understanding that the money is channeled, not pocketed, and my earlier and longer post on US AID makes that clearer yet at greater length. Scott is simply misrepresenting me here.
Inline links: my earlier and longer post on US AID
There was an earlier time when US AID did much less channeling through American third party NGOs. That was in my view a better regime, though of course Congress wanted to spend more money on Americans, and furthermore parts of the Republican Party, often in the executive branch, viewed the NGO alternative as more flexible and also more market-friendly. That created a small number of triumphs, such as PEPFAR, and a lot of waste, and I am happy to clear away much of that waste. Doing so also will improve aid decision-making in the future. It is right to believe that US AID can operate on another basis, and also right to wish to stop a system that allows spending on ostensible “democracy promotion.” I find it a useful discipline to have an initial approach to the problem that starts with this question “if you can’t find poverty-fighting domestic institutions in a country to fund directly, with sufficient trust, perhaps you should be giving aid elsewhere.” I also find it plausible that doing a lot of initial and pretty radical clearing away of NGO relations is the best way to get there, though I agree that point is debatable.
Scott writes: “When Trump and Rubio try to tar them [US AID] as grifters in order to make it slightly easier to redistribute their Congress-earmarked money to kleptocrats and billionaire cronies, this goes beyond normal political lying into the sort of thing that makes you the scum of the earth, the sort of person for whom even an all-merciful God could not restrain Himself from creating Hell.” Is that how the rationalist community should be presenting itself? In a time when innocent Americans are gunned down in the streets for their (ostensible) political views, and political assassination attempts seem to be rising, and there even has been a rationalist murder cult running around, does this show a morally responsible and clear thinking approach to the post that was published?
Slightly Against The "Other People's Money" Argument Against Aid
January 23, 2026 · Original source
In the comments to last year’s USAID post, Fabian said:
Inline links: said
This is a good question. I’m more sympathetic to this argument than I am to the usual strategy of blatantly lying about the efficacy of USAID; I’m a sucker for virtuous libertarianism when applied consistently.