One China expert told Newsweek that the USAID funding freeze had handed an "enormous gift" to Beijing's push to influence the Global South. Meanwhile, one Kremlin propagandist has said on Russian television that Moscow could exploit the gap left by USAID and project geopolitical power with a similar program.

Killing USAID by contrast is, as experts have noted, a gift to Russia and China. It's a gift to Russia because the current largest line item the USAID budget goes to Ukraine, which has been as devastated by the Russian invasion as many of those European countries were by the Nazis in 1945.

Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to President Trump, has targeted the U.S. Agency for International Development as part of the Trump administration’s push to slash federal spending.In less than two weeks,