Weather as a Weapon
The 1996 report was remarkably specific. It proposed a "weather force support element" embedded in the Commander in Chief's air operations center tasked with forecasting storm paths and triggering or intensifying thunderstorm cells over critical target areas. The authors outlined operational capabilities ranging from precipitation enhancement to flood lines of communication, to storm modification to choose the battlespace environment, and space weather modification to disrupt enemy communications. [1]
What made the report controversial was its frankness. "The technology is there, waiting for us to pull it all together" the authors wrote. "In 2025 we can Own the Weather". They also acknowledged the high-risk / high-reward nature of the endeavor comparing it to the splitting of the atom. The technology has tremendous military potential that society would always be reluctant to examine. [1]
A Booming Industry
While the U.S. military has publicly distanced itself from offensive weather modification, the commercial weather modification industry has exploded (think in terms of NGOs). The space-based weather modification market alone was valued at $1.58 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $2.43 billion by 2030. This market that impacts our lives is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 8.9%. [2]
Weather Modification International (WMI), based in Fargo, North Dakota is the most established player. Founded in 1961, WMI holds a three-year contract with the North Dakota Department of Water Resources for the North Dakota Cloud Modification Project in their 65th consecutive summer season of the program. The 2025 season concluded with 86.01 flight hours. [3] WMI also acquired SPEC Incorporated in May 2025 further expanding its atmospheric measurement capabilities. The Humboldt River Basin Water Authority report is an interesting read. [2]
Rainmaker, founded in 2023 by 25-year-old Augustus Doricko, is the Silicon Valley startup uses drones to fly into the troposphere and release silver iodide particles to seed rain and snow. In August 2026, Rainmaker conducted cloud-seeding activities on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, generating approximately 57.6 acre-feet of rain (approximately 19 million gallons) in a single event with an interquartile range of 45–65 acre-feet. [4]
Make Sunsets (how prophetic), a California-based startup takes a different approach: Solar Geoengineering. The company releases sulfur dioxide particles into the stratosphere via balloons to reflect sunlight and cool the planet. Customers can purchase "cooling credits" for as little as $1 USD. The company has raised more than $1 million USD in investment and sold over $100,000 cooling credits. [5]
Stardust Solutions, an American-Israeli geoengineering startup, raised $60 million in 2025 which is the largest-ever fundraising round for a company aiming to cool the Earth by spraying particles into the atmosphere (What could possibly go wrong?). The round was led by Lowercarbon Capital, the climate-tech investment firm co-founded by Chris Sacca. [6]
The money trail reveals weather modification is no longer a fringe (taboo) activity. The Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority awarded a $1.09 million contract to North American Weather Consultants for a weather modification pilot operation running from 2022 to 2027. The North Dakota Cloud Modification Project continues under a three-year contract with WMI. Is it lucrative? Well, it has a benefit-to-cost ratio estimated at 31-to-1 to 53-to-1. [3] I'm not an accountant but this sounds like a pretty good return for performing a Psyop-in-Physical-Reality on Mother Nature.
The U.S. military has also invested in atmospheric research. The University of North Dakota received a contract of just over $1 million USD to conduct research on behalf of the Naval Surface Warfare Center. [3] NOAA continues to require reporting on weather modification activities under Public Law 92-205 [15] with companies filing reports for convective cloud formation research. [3]
Although no single federal database comprehensively tracks all U.S. weather-modification spending, the available contract and program data show an annual investment in the tens of millions of dollars, driven primarily by state and local water authorities rather than the federal government. Utah spends roughly $16 million per year and Idaho about $5 million, while North Dakota's Weather Modification International contract for the 2025–2027 summer seasons is valued at $615,000, with the broader North Dakota Cloud Modification Project estimated to generate $21.2 million to $41.9 million in annual agricultural benefits at a benefit-to-cost ratio of 31-to-1 to 53-to-1. California has awarded North American Weather Consultants $342,625 per year for the Lopez Lake Watershed and $1.09 million for the Santa Ana Watershed pilot through 2027. Colorado's Central Colorado Mountains River Basin program has received $231,750 in state funding toward an anticipated total of about $450,000, and Wyoming has contracted Weather Modification LLC for $563,469.13 in the Medicine Bow Mountains and $299,167.82 plus $175,701.74 in the Wind River Mountains. Federal and territorial examples include a $266,955 Bureau of Reclamation grant for the Nacimiento and San Antonio watersheds, an $80,000 USDA cloud-seeding contract, and a $400,000 emergency Puerto Rico contract running through November 2026. More broadly, roughly $300 million in federal funds have been spent since 1960 on weather-modification research and development, and the Smarter Weather Forecasting Act of 2025 authorizes up to $45 million per year for related projects. These figures underscore how fragmented (but financially significant) the U.S. weather-modification market has become. As the saying goes: "Money changes everything".
Environmental Accumulation of Silver Iodide
Last time I visited my father, he said; "Snow and ice don't look or react the way it did fifty years ago". While I was writing this article, his comment rang over and over in my ears.
The most widely used cloud seeding agent (silver iodide [AgI]) carries environmental risks that are often understated. A 2025 study published in Insects found that silver iodide and potassium iodide (both used in cloud seeding) had a measurable negative effect on honey bee learning across multiple experimental paradigms, including shuttle box, proboscis extension reflex, and free-flying discrimination tasks. [7]
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has acknowledged that while existing research suggests silver iodide does not pose an environmental or health concern at current levels, it is not known whether more widespread use of silver iodide would have an effect on public health or the environment. [8] Federal reporting requirements simply do not capture all necessary information. The absence of coordinated long-term monitoring means we cannot yet know whether that safety holds under expanded and cumulative use.
Precipitation Redistribution Robs Peter to Pay Paul
A persistent concern in cloud seeding is the "extra area" effect which is the hypothesis that seeding in one region reduces precipitation in adjacent areas. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that in the Arizona Cloud-Seeding Experiment apparent effects of seeding on rain in downwind localities 90–180 miles away included a 45% loss of rain (P = 0.002) and a 34% loss of rain (P = 0.028). [9] The possibility that weather modification merely redistribute (rather than creates) precipitation raises profound questions about who has the right to "harvest" rain that might otherwise fall elsewhere. [9]
A report from the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) states: "A synthesis of the literature and policy debates reached four general conclusions: (1) The need for weather modification programs is expected to keep growing, though regional variations may exist due to regulatory and other local factors; (2) weather modification can bring significant local benefits, ranging from enhanced agricultural yield and recreational economy to extreme weather management and public environmental health benefits; (3) state-level and local support, including financial resources, will be essential for program development in the foreseeable future; and (4) technological advancements will be critical for addressing many of the project operation efficiency challenges and environmental and public health concerns related to weather modification programs". [14]
Socioeconomic / Political "Thunder Storms"
"Personnel must be hired and trained, equipment maintained and improved, seeding chemicals and flares obtained, and procedures put in place to allow for smooth project operations". [10] This is not always the optimistic outlook shared by the public; You know, the lives affected by the weather.
The North Dakota Cloud Modification Project's 2025 operations report reveals a significant development: The project's operational area was reduced despite its long history, primarily due to local political action. Counties in District II (Williams, McKenzie, and Mountrail) declined to renew their Weather Modification Authority, effectively ending their participation. [11] In Mountrail County, voters ended their convective weather modification program by 66% in the November 2024 election. [11] This demonstrates that even long-established weather modification programs face growing public resistance as awareness of potential risks increases. [10][11] As a side note, my state of Florida is now the second state (behind Tennessee) to ban certain weather-modification activities. [11]
Geopolitical Weaponization Dilemma
"China and Russia are disruptors of the world order, whether by design or not, and climate change is the biggest disruptor of them all" noted Howard Jones, CEO of the Born Free Foundation, a conservation NGO. "In several African countries we're already seeing rural settlements disrupted by development projects funded and executed by China. Those projects include altering the flows of entire river systems and putting good land to use for export of food and resources to China". [12]
The historical precedent of Operation Popeye which was the U.S. military's cloud-seeding campaign during the Vietnam War to extend the monsoon season and disrupt enemy supply lines remains a cautionary tale. [12]
The ENMOD Convention "Grey Zone" of Regulation
The 1977 UN Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) prohibits the use of environmental modification techniques that cause "widespread, long-lasting or severe effects" for military or hostile purposes. Article II of ENMOD defines environmental modification techniques as any technique for changing, through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes, the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. [13]
However, the convention contains critical loopholes. The terms "widespread", "long-lasting", and "severe" are defined in ways that leave considerable room for interpretation. Under existing definitions, localized short-term cloud seeding operations (even those with measurable environmental effects and negative impacts) could potentially fall outside the convention's prohibitions. [13] As I mentioned earlier in this article, the GAO has noted that federal reporting requirements may not include all information necessary to adequately monitor cloud seeding, and that opportunities to better evaluate the benefits and potential effects may be missed. [8]
The New Frontier of Solar Geoengineering
Solar geoengineering introduces additional risks. Releasing sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere could delay ozone recovery, alter regional precipitation patterns, and create a "termination shock" if abruptly stopped. [5][6] These concerns have led some scientists to call for an international non-use agreement, even as private companies push forward with experimental deployments. [5][6]
In a February 2023 speech at the Munich Security Conference, George Soros endorsed a specific solar geoengineering proposal developed by Sir David King, former U.K. chief scientific adviser and founder of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge University. The plan involves deploying more than 500 ocean vessels to spray seawater into the atmosphere over the Arctic during summer, creating brighter, more reflective clouds to refreeze the region. "Our civilization is in danger of collapsing because of the inexorable advance of climate change" Soros said during a 40-minute speech at the annual international forum in Germany. Slashing heat-trapping emissions and adapting to a hotter world "are necessary but not sufficient" he said. "The climate system is broken, and it needs to be repaired". Climate change is a relatively new focus for Soros, who has donated over $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations, a network of nonprofits he created in 1984. [16]
Soros' speech prompted criticism and calls for caution from geoengineering researchers. "George Soros should have known better" Prakash Kashwan, an environmental studies professor at Brandeis University. Deploying geoengineering technologies could lead to "a dangerous centralization of power and control in the hands of authoritarian-minded billionaires and politicians" Kashwan added. "Technological choices are not a one-way street and don't work according to the technically-defined narrow understandings that scientists like to showcase".
Now What Do We Do?
The question is no longer whether we can modify the weather, it's who will control it, regulate it, and bear the consequences. The 1996 Air Force report imagined a world where the U.S. military could "own the weather". That ownership is fragmented: spreading across startups, government contractors, and international partnerships. The technology exists and the contracts are being signed continuously. The adverse effects from silver iodide accumulation and the precipitation redistribution are becoming harder to ignore.
As the report's authors warned years ago: "History also teaches that we cannot afford to be without a weather-modification capability once the technology is developed and used by others". The only question is whether we will develop the governance frameworks to match the technology before it's too late to control the real outcomes.
Until next time……..