Also USAID existing prevented NGOs to have too much local political power and the corruption that goes with it.
My opinion is that overall, USAID was a net positive, although in some specific cases it wasn't.
> A rise in instability abroad also creates a national-security risk for the U.S., Wright adds. Yemen—once a major USAID recipient, with $768 million worth of aid flowing into the country in 2024—is also home to the Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group that controls much of the country’s north and has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. As USAID funding disappears, support for the rebels is only likely to grow, he says. “Iran can continue to finance rebellions like the Houthis,” says Wright. “These second- and third-order effects might be even more consequential to the U.S. than the direct effects.”
* https://time.com/article/2026/05/15/usaid-shutdown-rise-glob...
* Analysis: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeh7122
Or: Iran was supporting them already, but more people joined up because they were more desperate because the alternative (aid) had gone away.
The quality/quantity of support from Iran may not even have changed, but rather people's willingness to accept it.
I have, luckily, read a personal account of the logistical assistance that a USAID contractor had [0]. Doug Muir wrote about improving customs practices in Rwanda and training locals to take over for him. Improving, in this case, means standardizing inspections of trade goods to decrease holding time.
[0] https://crookedtimber.org/2025/03/08/usaid-my-next-to-last-p...
Also declassified files about mkultra and mknaomi mentioned USAID but I didn't read the specifics so it might not be that bad.
But yeah, I've never read the book you're talking about, but USAID usefulness wasn't so much in medicine and food (which are still important), but in organisational, logistics and administrative support to NGOs that really increases their effectiveness, and especially small NGOs like libraries without borders or OLSF( my cousin directed this one for a few years, that's how I know how useful USAID was)
This reminds me of the standard USA tech startup model, where you do something useful to get the users, while secretly exploiting them.