The hardest startup in America 

Augustus Doricko’s Rainmaker uses cloud seeding tech to bring rain where it’s needed. In the process, he’s been swept up in a storm of controversy involving accusations that he’s playing God, an agent of the deep state, and worse.

Augustus Doricko, founder and CEO of cloud-seeding startup Rainmaker, surveys the sky from a sunbaked hillside 5 miles from Utah’s Great Salt Lake. On this balmy Sunday afternoon in late September, the lake is calm, but its serenity belies a potentially catastrophic problem: The Great Salt Lake is shrinking—and is at risk of disappearing altogether.