When catastrophic floods struck Assam in northeastern India in 2018, the devastation prompted a serious concern among national security officials in New Delhi: might the ability to manipulate weather evolve into a method of geopolitical coercion or even warfare?
As scientific capabilities progress, the prospect of weather control being used as a lever of political pressure—or as a weapon—has moved from theory to a pressing strategic question.
Much of this anxiety has focused on neighboring China. Assam’s then finance minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, publicly voiced apprehension regarding Beijing’s Tianhe, or Sky River, initiativeone of the world’s largest weather-modification programmes.
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The programme, first proposed in 2016, is designed to capture and redirect atmospheric moisture across the Tibetan Plateau. It has drawn criticism from experts both inside China and internationally.
“If this new system is introduced, there will surely be huge ramifications,” Sarma stated, emphasizing that India must not overlook the downstream consequences of extensive atmospheric intervention.
China’s plan to broaden its artificial precipitation operations to cover 5.5 million square kilometres (2.1 million square miles)—a region roughly 1.7 times the size of India—has transformed what was once regional conjecture into a matter of national security.
As climate-related catastrophes grow in both frequency and severity, from powerful typhoons striking China to the historic floods that paralyzed Dubai, the atmosphere has come to represent far more than a backdrop to climate change.