China deployed the same technology to keep the skies clear during the Beijing Olympics. Dubai seeds clouds to create rain rather than disrupt it. Thailand maintains a Bureau of Royal Rainmaking and Agricultural Aviation. Several U.S. states also manipulate the weather.

Militaries love the technology and its implications, but rarely raise a cloud in anger. A U.N treaty stays their hands. But that doesn’t mean that world’s armed forces — particularly in America — don’t at least research weaponized weather.

One U.S. Air Force white paper from the 1990s proposed creating artificial clouds of very, very tiny “nanomachines” that could, in theory, manipulate the weather, spy on the enemy down below and even steer lighting to fry targets on the ground.

Yes, this sounds ridiculous, but other tech that the paper proposes — and which might have seemed impossible in 1996 — is either here or coming soon. So maybe smart clouds aren’t far off.

America’s obsession with weaponized weather began after World War II. The muddy fields of Europe and Southeast Asia’s torrential rainfalls compelled a generation of soldiers to wonder how they could turn Mother Nature — and enlist her as an American ally. Vietnam was the perfect testing ground for many strange weather-experiments.