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In August 1996, seven officers led by Col Tamzy J. House presented a research paper to Air Force 2025, a study the paper's own disclaimer describes as "designed to comply with a directive from the chief of staff of the Air Force to examine the concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future." Its title: Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025.

The executive summary opens with the line in this clip: "In 2025, US aerospace forces can 'own the weather' by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications" (page vi). Two pages later it signs off the same way: "in 2025 we can 'Own the Weather'" (page viii). In between it sketches what that might mean: "Precipitation Enhancement" to "Flood Lines of Communication," fog and cloud modification "to conceal our assets from surveillance" (table 1, page vii; page 31).

It was never a plan the Air Force adopted. The disclaimer says the report "was produced in the Department of Defense school environment of academic freedom," that "the views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force," and that it "contains fictional representations of future situations/scenarios." It was a thought experiment with a date on the cover.

The date was 2025. This clip sets the title page against Clouds and Weather, a 1939 U.S. Department of Agriculture (Weather Bureau) film about the weather cycle, whose narrator describes a storm the old-fashioned way: "heavy showers occur. These are normally brief but violent rainstorms" (04:21). Then a weathervane, and the calendar.