Do New Reports Signal a Shift in US Conservatives’ Approach to SRM?

In the span of just a couple of weeks, three new reports from conservative-leaning think tanks in the US were released that addressed SRM along with weather modification. Though their timing may simply be a coincidence, together they suggest at least some on the American right are taking a different approach from those attempting to ban the technologies. All follow similar lines of argument, avoiding climate change to frame this issue around familiar Republican concerns.

“Even during the few months we spent working on the paper, it seemed that weather modification was getting growing attention”, said Tom Wolfe, the policy director for the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute (TCCRI) and author of the group’s report, in an email to SRM360. “The weather modification issue has appeared on the public’s radar, which is leading to more voices on both sides of the debate.”

Along with TCCRI, the other reports were released by the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) and the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy in collaboration with SilverLining.

A focus on bans

All three reports address the ongoing trend of state-level attempts to ban any intentional dispersal of material into the atmosphere. Bills that often do not distinguish between weather modification and SRM have been proposed in 37 states, and three have passed (in Tennessee, Florida, and Louisiana). All the reports argue against this approach.

George David Banks, the president and CEO of the ACCF and author of the group’s recent report, said he had been interested in exploring the topic for several years but was partially inspired by the attempt to pass a ban at the federal level. Former Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced the Clear Skies Act in the summer of 2025; she has since resigned from Congress and that bill has not progressed, but another similar bill was introduced in February 2026 by Republican Greg Steube of Florida. To date, it has one additional co-sponsor.

Banks, who has served as a policy advisor to Republican presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, said these trends led him to believe that the party needed to formulate a position on the topic. He noted that his target audience for the ACCF report is Republican congressional staff, an audience that in general might be harder to reach than Democrats when it comes to climate-related policies. “I want to see a core group of Republicans support a research and development agenda to better understand the technology, regardless of how people feel about climate change.”

Avoiding climate change discussion

The arguments against bans and for increased research and atmospheric monitoring in the three reports centre around several points, including a desire to keep up with other countries – in particular China, which has a modest SRM research programme but an enormous and growing weather modification programme. Notably, none dwell very long on climate change itself.

Banks said he purposely did not make climate-centric arguments. “Don’t make it about that”, he said. “Even though it’s clear that it’s a climate technology, let’s focus on the national security arguments.”

Citing the example of Operation Popeye – the US military’s attempts during the Vietnam war to use cloud seeding to flood supply routes – Banks argues in his report that SRM’s “amplified weaponization potential” makes US participation and “proactive leadership” in the field critical.

While experts in the field are mixed about its disruptive potential, its use as a direct weapon is generally not considered a big risk. Banks said that with technological advances that might change in the future. “I think it’s really dangerous for people just to shrug it off or ignore it”, he said.

The Rainey Center’s report focuses on the idea of “weather sovereignty”, which the authors define as “the nation’s ability to understand, monitor, and safeguard our own skies”. The report warns that China is trying to become a “weather superpower” and that “[p]rivate companies, NGOs, and foreign governments are racing toward deployment” of SRM by the end of this decade, and advocates for expanded American research as well as more thorough atmospheric monitoring. The report offers no evidence that such a “race” is underway, and no countries or other entities have announced plans for deployment of SRM by 2030.

In a post on LinkedIn, SRM360 contributor Josh Horton noted that the reports, in particular the Rainey Center’s, frame the technologies in “fundamentally adversarial terms”. As such, he went on, “they are unhelpful interventions in the debate”. The Rainey Center did not respond to an SRM360 request for comment.

Moral hazard on display

The TCCRI report explicitly positions SRM as a potential replacement for a speedy transition away from fossil fuels, which it argues would carry “staggering costs” – especially for the “traditional energy companies” that play a major role in Texas’s economy. This represents a relatively clear demonstration of the concept of mitigation displacement, also known as “moral hazard”.

“These two points – the relatively low cost of SRM and the speed with which it could be implemented”, Wolfe wrote in his report, “make it preferable to rapidly re-shaping economies to reduce [greenhouse gas] emissions”.

This development has long been a concern – that the perception of SRM as relatively cheap and easy could convince Republicans that it represents a way to slow a transition away from fossil fuels. But as Horton noted in a Perspective for SRM360 last year, that fear had not yet materialised – it remains to be seen if TCCRI’s report is an outlier or the first step in that direction.

Coincidence or a “sea change”?

Though three reports in such a short period of time is notable, there still isn’t any particular indication of a broader shift in attitude across the American right on climate interventions or weather modification.

The state-level bans that have passed are in generally wetter states that did not use any weather modification anyway. In states that do use cloud seeding to increase precipitation, such as Utah, Wyoming, and Texas, those bills have stalled out or died in committee, suggesting the existence of the practice there and the benefits it provides may work as a counterweight to legislative ban attempts.

Wolfe, of TCCRI, said the recent documents reflect some growing attention to the topic, but perhaps not indicative of a larger trend. “[W]e don’t necessarily take them as evidence of a sea change in conservative thinking on weather modification (at least not yet)”, he said. In fact, he added that they see it as a possibility that the increased attention may be counter-productive, generating more support for bans. “I hope our paper helps inform that debate.”