US federal ban on cloud seeding is highly unlikely
Dacia Leone · How Supercool Earth's microbes could ease the water crisis · May 20, 2026 · at 35:57
Dacia Leone is the CEO of Supercool Earth, a startup using biological proteins for cloud seeding and snowmaking, responding to regulatory concerns.
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“I think that a blanket federal mandate to ban cloud seeding or weather mod is highly unlikely.”
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“There is a lot, there are many up-and-coming companies within the startup space that are VC-backed, that are exploring these technologies and wanting to bring them to scale.”
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“As much as I love biology, we can't deploy it for every single solution. Chemistry wins a lot.”
Silver iodide does not degrade and harms humans, microbes, and fish
“Whereas silver iodide is a metal, and it does not degrade in the environment. So it, ah, it sticks around, and it's bad for humans, for microbes, and for fish. And it's not something that will go away once you release it down into the environment.”
Investors now refuse to fund biotech without early commercial traction
“So investors now are unwilling to give gobs and gobs of money when you don't have commercial traction or a plan for revenue and what you're going to get that revenue. And they're not necessarily willing to wait years and years for that to happen.”