While this certainly activates the old almond, this may not be as uncommon as you think. The DoD, and more broadly, some defense contractors in, will sometimes engage in exercises like this (on the surface, somewhat ridiculous proposals) for the purpose of keeping people sharp or exploring ideas just for the hell of it. I know personally in the organization I work at we have thrown money at certain "projects" like this (not a weather dominator or some shit lol but less immediately practical projects), with the full knowledge it will never see the light of day and it's just to see what we can do.

Let me put this another way, the ends of this stuff aren't perhaps as shadowy as you might believe. I don't know if this document went anywhere, especially since it's publicly available, but it's no different than the CDC writing documents on how to survive a zombie apocalypse. It's very well-researched, cited and sourced , but fictional, thought exercises. Not that it posits anything outlandish either (who wouldn't want to have a weather controller as a weapon against other powers?), but I don't think that should inspire explicit concern, necessarily. Fun to speculate, but mostly outside of the realm of cyberspace privacy invasions and political backroom dealing, I wouldn't worry too much about the implications of the kind of technology were talking about in this case.

To perhaps assuage any other roundabout thoughts you might have: we've got some pretty impressive shit, but it's all made by fellow citizens like yourself and we're not some shadowy cabal. We just don't want the Chinese getting their hands on it or something.

Admittedly though, my beef is when the abuse happens from opportunistic politicians (see: Clintons), but again, the kind of power were talking about here isn't there explicitly and I have relative confidence in the higher works of the military staff being patriots, as well as a good portion of the guys on the ground level (although maybe not as many as I've thought in the past seeing some of what I see on a daily basis--too many out of shape kids who looked like they signed on for the benefits and not the service-ship).

Sorry if that was rambling a bit. Just my two cents. I'm definitely gonna thumb through that pdf. I like reading this stuff too.