Make It Rain
How We Survive
Marketplace
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 10 June 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Can a technology used for war help prevent an environmental catastrophe in the making?
Cloud seeding is a technique where particles, usually silver iodide, gets dispersed into clouds to help generate more rain or snow and it’s been around for 80 years. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. used cloud seeding in a top secret mission called Operation Popeye, to prolong the monsoon season in Vietnam. It’s since been deployed by state governments and private companies to bring more water to arid places. The only problem? It was hard to verify just how well it worked, which meant it was hard to make any money doing it. Until now.
We tag along with a team of cloud seeders in Utah as they race to try to save the Great Salt Lake, and build a rainmaking empire.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This season is all about the wild ways we're engineering nature to save the planet, |
| 0:06.1 | but it turns out the U.S. has a pretty dark history when it comes to using tech that messes with the weather. |
| 0:14.0 | During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Air Force deployed meteorological warfare in secret. |
| 0:22.9 | The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a lifeline for the North Vietnamese military, |
| 0:28.5 | a network of dirt roads that wound through a hot and humid jungle. |
| 0:33.5 | It allowed them to send supplies and soldiers south. |
| 0:37.3 | What if the U.S. military could manipulate the weather to prolong the monsoon season? |
| 0:43.0 | Flooding the trails, triggering landslides, making it even more dangerous. |
| 0:48.9 | The Pentagon today denied a report in the New York Times that the United States has been seeding clouds over |
| 0:56.0 | North Vietnam to cause rain for military reasons. |
| 1:00.3 | In 1972, towards the end of the war, investigative journalist Seymour Hirsch uncovered |
| 1:06.4 | details of a secret cloud seeding program called Operation Popeye. |
| 1:12.2 | The Times also said that much the same thing has been done in Laos and South Vietnam, |
| 1:17.1 | but the Pentagon wouldn't comment on that. |
| 1:19.7 | A defense spokesman said... |
| 1:21.2 | Cloud seeding involves releasing tiny particles, |
| 1:24.9 | often silver iodide, into clouds. |
| 1:28.2 | The silver iodide causes water molecules in the cloud to freeze and fall out as precipitation. |
| 1:35.2 | The technology had been around for a few decades by the Vietnam War, first discovered in the |
| 1:41.0 | 1940s by scientists at General Electric, and the U.S. government had been |
| 1:46.4 | testing its potential to increase precipitation in the arid west. |
| 1:51.9 | These researchers are about to seed a cumulus cloud with silver iodide particles, providing |
... |
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