• New Gallup data reveals the US has fallen behind many G7 countries in key indicators.
• 26% of Americans struggled to afford food in 2023, and confidence in the military has fallen.
• Public confidence in US institutions, including the government and judiciary, has declined.

The US may be losing its strong standing among the world's most developed nations.

New data from Gallup released Wednesday shows that for the first time in nearly two decades of polling, the US has fallen behind several G7 countries — an informal group of industrialized democracies — for indicators such as people's ability to meet basic needs, confidence in the national government, and trust in the military.

"The U.S. remains the dominant voice of the G7 on the global stage," the Gallup report notes. "But the reality of public opinion at home is starting to tell a different story: one in which the U.S. no longer stands out as a leader in confidence in institutions, fundamental to its democracy."

The US spends more on its military than most of the G7 countries combined, though confidence has progressively fallen over the last few years. US confidence in the military fell to a new low of 81% — and for the first time, US confidence fell below another G7 nation, France.

The drop in confidence began shortly after the Biden Administration's decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan in 2021, falling from 93% reported confidence in 2020 in former President Donald Trump's final year in the White House to 81% in 2023 more than halfway through Biden's term.

Additionally, Gallup's polling revealed that just a third of Americans in 2023 thought the US was spending the right amount on defense, with 35% thinking the US spends too much and 29% believing that the Department of Defense's total budget of $851.8 billion in 2023 wasn't enough.

The survey also noted a steep drop in confidence in the US judicial system, with the share of respondents saying they were confident falling to 42% in 2023, making it the nation with the lowest judicial confidence and slightly lower than Italy. The sharp drop in reported confidence in 2023 occurred the same year four grand juries across the country indicted former president Trump, charging him with 91 felonies, which he and many of his supporters have deemed as politically motivated.

The US Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade's decades-old abortion precedent in 2022 may have played a role in the drop in reported confidence as well, a decision that nearly 60% of Americans disapprove of, according to Pew Research.

After a tumultuous 2023 in the House of Representatives that immediately began with a power struggle, later leading to former Rep. Kevin McCarthy historically getting ousted as speaker, Gallup reported that public confidence in the US government fell to just 30%, or 3 percentage points beneath the United Kingdom, which has cycled through 3 prime ministers since mid-2022.

Despite those sour views of American institutions, the country's economy remains stronger than its G7 peers. US GDP grew 2.5% in 2023 from the previous year, compared to Japan at 1.9% and Canada at 1.5%, according to the OECD.

Still, each year since 2009, the US has had the highest — or tied highest — percentage of residents saying they were struggling to afford food. In 2023, 26% of Americans at times struggled to afford food in the last 12 months, compared to the next highest, Canada, at 17%. Japan, the lowest of the G7 countries, was only 8%.

"Even though the U.S. economy is growing faster than any other G7 country, the economic perceptions among its people do not fully reflect this economic reality," Benedict Vigers, associate consultant and author of the report, told BI. "Americans are split on their economic trajectory: with 44% thinking their local economies are getting better, and 48% thinking they are getting worse. Similarly, the proportion of Americans who are 'living comfortably on their present incomes' dipped again in 2023 to 41% – it has not been lower than this in over a decade."

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• Tesla is having a rough start to the year. 
• The EV maker reported disappointing deliveries for Q1, before announcing sweeping layoffs.
• With falling demand in the US and increased competition in China, Tesla is in a tough spot.

Tesla is in full-blown cost-cutting mode.

After releasing a disastrous first-quarter sales report this month, CEO Elon Musk announced the company would reveal a long-awaited robotaxi in August. 

But that announcement was quickly overshadowed by sweeping layoffs, something Musk attributed to a reorganization and streamlining "for the next phase of growth." 

In all, Tesla said it would cut more than 10% of its workforce, amounting to more than 14,000 people. Tesla is also losing some key top executives: Drew Baglino and Rogan Patel announced this week they would leave the company. Baglino was senior vice president for powertrain and energy engineering and Patel was vice president of public policy and business development.

It's unclear what, exactly, Tesla plans to show off in August as a self-driving, revenue-generating new product. And in the months between then and now, investors are demanding more than a rehashed robotaxi dream.

It's not Musk's first time promising a self-driving taxi

Musk said in 2019 that he expected Tesla to have 1 million cars on the road in the next year that could function as robotaxis.

"We believe we'll have the most profitable autonomous taxi on the market," he said on an earnings call in April of that year.

On a separate fundraising call around that time, he said Full Self-Driving could propel Tesla to a $500-billion valuation, and make Teslas worth up to $250,000, CNBC reported at the time. He also reportedly said Tesla robotaxis would be able to do 100 hours of work a week for their owners.

In the years since, Tesla's Full Self-Driving software (which remains Level 2, even as competing automakers have reached Level 3 and beyond), has rolled out to more vehicles as Tesla has continued to outsell competitors. Its market cap did, in fact, hit $500 billion, as Musk predicted. And it turned a profit at long last. 

But a robotaxi never materialized, even as Musk continued to tout FSD as a continued linchpin to Tesla's growth.

Now, cheaper EVs have thrown a wrench into Musk's plans

Tesla started an all-out price war in 2023, slashing prices up to $20,000 and bringing its best-selling model below the average price for any new car (about $47,000 in March 2024) in an effort to boost sales and stay ahead of the competition.

More than a year in, Tesla has, for the most part, maintained its pricing edge thanks to industry-leading margins, while some other automakers rethink their EV plans.

But Tesla might not remain the price leader forever. According to Reuters, Tesla has ended plans for another one of Musk's longtime pet projects: a truly affordable EV. The car, sometimes called the Model 2, was expected to cost $25,000 — about $14,000 less than Tesla's cheapest sedan.

Musk disputed the report, which cited internal documents and multiple people with knowledge of the matter, leaving analysts scratching their heads about what comes next.

After years of growth at hyper-speed, Tesla reducing its labor force isn't unthinkable — especially after building a brand new factory to churn out an entirely new (and not-yet-profitable) product — but it could hint at demand problems.

"The sweeping layoffs announced yesterday, amounting to a reduction in crewed production capacity, should now leave no doubt that the decline in deliveries has been a function of lower demand and not supply," JPMorgan analyst Ryan Brinkman said in a note to clients on Tuesday as shares fell to their lowest levels in more than a year.

Kelley Blue Book data also points to flagging demand, showing Tesla's share of the US EV market has fallen to 51% this year from 62% in 2023.

And Tesla is facing intensifying competition in China, where it's now neck-and-neck with homegrown EV startups like BYD, who are exporting their cheaper cars to Europe, Asia, and Mexico, further increasing the pressure.

Musk is sure to face questions about the Model 2 when it reports earnings on April 23. Analysts will also be looking to learn how a robotaxi can turn a profit, too. 

"Investors are struggling to see how the company can use its infrastructure and network to achieve a path to monetization," Adam Jonas, a longtime Tesla bull, said in a note to clients on April 11.

And first, they'll have to get them street-legal.  

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• The AI war is going to be really, really, really expensive.
• Google DeepMind boss Demis Hassabis suggests Google will spend $100 billion-plus on AI development.
• His prediction signals just how much money tech giants will have to spend to make AI smarter.

Winning the AI wars won't come cheap. Just ask Demis Hassabis.

To kick off this year's TED conference, Google's AI boss gave an audience in Vancouver a reality check on Monday by offering his best guess on how much the search giant will spend on developing AI: more than $100 billion.

Hassabis, who leads the famed research lab DeepMind within Google, and is arguably the single most important figure at the center of Alphabet's AI plans, shared the astronomical number in response to a question about what the competition was up to.

According to a report from The Information last month, Microsoft and OpenAI have been drawing up plans to create a $100 billion supercomputer called "Stargate" containing "millions of specialized server chips" to power the ChatGPT-maker's AI.

Naturally, then, when Hassabis was asked about his rivals' rumored supercomputer and its cost, he was quick to note that Google's spend could top that: "We don't talk about our specific numbers, but I think we're investing more than that over time."

Though the generative AI boom has already triggered a huge surge of investment — AI startups alone raised almost $50 billion last year, per Crunchbase data — Hassabis' comments signal that competition to lead the AI sector is going to get a lot more expensive.

That's especially the case for companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, which are all engaged in an intense battle to emerge as the first to claim the development of artificial general intelligence, AI with the capacity to match human reasoning and ingenuity.

Chunky chips

Still, the idea that one company could spend more than $100 billion on a single technology that some think could be overhyped is eye-opening.

It's worth considering where that spending could go. For starters, a big chunk of development cost will be on chips.

They make for one of the most expensive purchases for companies invested in the race to develop smarter AI. Simply put, the more chips you have, the more computing power available to train AI models on greater volumes of data.

Companies working on large language models, like Google's Gemini and OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo, have depended significantly on chips from third parties like Nvidia. But they're increasingly trying to design their own.

The general business of training models is getting more expensive, too.

Stanford University's annual AI index report, published this week, notes that the "training costs of state-of-the-art AI models have reached unprecedented levels."

It noted that OpenAI's GPT-4 used "an estimated $78 million worth of compute to train," versus the $4.3 million that was used to train GPT-3 in 2020. Google's Gemini Ultra, meanwhile, cost $191 million to train. The original technology behind AI models cost about $900 to train in 2017.

The report also noted that "there is a direct correlation between the training costs of AI models and their computational requirements," so if AGI is the end goal, the cost is only likely to spiral.

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• Tesla shares have tumbled 62% from their peak as investors gear up for a growth slowdown.
• The stock drop has fueled an estimated $160 billion decline in Elon Musk's net worth.
• The Tesla CEO is now worth about $178 billion, down from $340 billion in November 2021.

Tesla's mounting troubles have dealt a heavy blow to Elon Musk's net worth.

In November 2021, the Tesla CEO held the top spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and seemed untouchable with an estimated fortune of $340 billion. He was more than three times richer than Warren Buffett at that point.

However, Musk's net worth has plunged by about $160 billion since then to $178 billion at Tuesday's close. The key driver has been Tesla stock, which has tumbled from a split-adjusted peak of $415 in 2021 to $157 — a 62% decline.

The share-price slump has slashed Tesla's market capitalization from north of $1.2 trillion to below $500 billion. Musk's net worth has taken a big hit from the decline because his 13% stake in the automaker makes up a big chunk of his wealth.

Musk's start to this year has also been dismal relative to his peers in the 12-digit club. He topped the Bloomberg rich list with a $229 billion fortune in January, but his net worth has crashed by $51 billion, or 22%, since then.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO now ranks third in the wealth rankings, behind LVMH's Bernard Arnault and Amazon's Jeff Bezos. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg is on the verge of leapfrogging him too.

Moreover, Musk is the only one of the world's 11 richest people whose net worth has declined this year. He's lost more money on paper than anyone on the list has gained, including Zuckerberg who's up almost $50 billion.

Tesla's stock has tumbled in recent months due to mounting concerns about the company. Musk told employees over the weekend that more than 10% of the company's global workforce would be laid off, signaling demand for EVs is faltering.

The automaker delivered fewer cars than expected to customers last quarter, and has made price cuts that threaten to erode its profit margins.

Moreover, Musk is fending off fierce competition from Chinese rivals like Buffett-backed BYD, and has repeatedly underscored the painful impact of higher interest rates on customer demand.

Musk's fortune isn't completely tied to Tesla. He also owns an estimated 42% stake in SpaceX, the space exploration company valued at $180 billion in December, and a roughly 79% stake in X after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it last year.

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• Singapore employees can formally request flexible work arrangements starting December 1.
• The guideline is part of a global trend toward workforce flexibility.
• While not legally binding, workers can approach unions for support if requests are not considered.

Employees in Singapore will be able to formally request arrangements like working from home, shorter workweeks, and flexible hours.

The new guideline, which kicks in on December 1, ensures that bosses officially consider requests for flexible arrangements that help workers manage their personal and professional lives, according to a Tuesday government release.

The announcement highlights a global effort by governments to give employees more flexibility and relax in-office policies. The UK, Ireland, and Australia have implemented similar arrangements.

In Singapore, 73% of young employees said they preferred remote jobs, according to a 2023 survey by research firm Universum. 

While the guideline is not legally binding, employees can seek assistance from the national trade union or their individual union if they feel their request was not properly considered. Employers can reject the request if they believe it affects the company's productivity and ability to meet a client's demand.

Women and older workers are more likely to request flexible work arrangements, the government noted. Women are more likely to work from home than men: 41% of women, compared with 28% of men, worked remotely in the US, according to the 2022 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey.

"Flexible work arrangements can be beneficial for both employees and employers," said Gan Siow Huang, Singapore's minister of state for manpower, in the press release. "They enable employees to achieve better work-life harmony, and give employers a competitive advantage in talent attraction and retention."

Singapore's version of the guideline applies to all businesses, regardless of size. It includes all workers once they have completed probation, the trial period at the beginning of the job when the employer can asses if someone is a good fit.

Having a formal process in place for workers to make requests can improve employees' mental health and work-life balance, Theodoric Chew, CEO of workplace mental health platform Intellect, told Business Insider.

If early adopters, like government agencies, show that flexible work helps employees without sacrificing productivity, companies will follow, Chew said.

Several American leaders, including Bernie Sanders, Point72 CEO Steve Cohen, and IAC and Expedia chairman Barry Diller, have called for, or predicted, four-day workweeks.

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• US Fed chair Jerome Powell has signaled a delay in expected interest rate cuts.
• He said the Fed needs more time to be confident that its fight against inflation is working.
• An analyst suggests excess money, a result of pandemic-era policies, may be drained from the economy this year.

US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell damped expectations of impending interest rate cuts on Tuesday — a sign that the Fed may have pumped so much money into the economy during the pandemic that the surplus is still making its way through the country.

Speaking on a panel discussion at the Wilson Center in Washington, Powell said while inflation pressure has eased in the last year, it hasn't come down enough in recent months.

"The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence and instead indicate that is likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence," Powell said Tuesday

This means that the Fed isn't confident at this point that inflation is headed to its 2% target level in the longer term.

Strong job growth is contributing to price gains. In particular, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index — a key inflation metric for the Fed — was little changed in March over its 2.8% reading in February, Powell pointed out.

So the Fed can keep interest rates higher for longer to cool price rises — although the central bank also has room to cut should the labor market "unexpectedly weaken," Powell added.

"If higher inflation does persist, we can maintain the current level of restriction for as long as needed," he said.

Higher interest rates make borrowing more expensive for anything from mortgages to credit cards — it encourages people to save rather than spend, which in theory, helps bring down prices. But it takes a while for the effects to be felt, and the risk is that the central bank raises rates to the point where the economy slows down and even tilts into recession as demand contracts.

Conversely, lower interest rates encourage borrowing and spending — thus driving the economy when growth slows, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic when the Fed cut rates massively and pumped money into the system.

Excess money may be drained from the economy this year, an analyst said

Powell's comments on Tuesday were a departure from just a month ago, when Fed officials stuck to their expectations of three rate cuts this year.

They also illustrate the Fed's tricky balance as it tries to steer the US economy into a "soft landing," thus averting a recession.

Jim Reid, a research strategist at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note on Tuesday that he believes it will be "incredibly difficult" to achieve a soft landing for the US economy because it's moved from the largest jump in the money supply since the World War II to the largest contraction since 1930.

Even though the Fed has tightened the money supply — hiking interest rates 11 times since March 2022 — the scale of the COVID-19 stimulus and money supply is still taking time to work through the system, Reid added in the note published before Powell's comments on the same day.

But Reid thinks the excess money could be drained from the economy later this year, when money supply in the economy normalizes.

"If that's correct, then maybe cutting rates in preparation for that is actually the correct thing to do," said Reid. "However, faced with inflation that is currently accelerating, that would be very, very difficult for the Fed to communicate and be comfortable doing."

Deustche Bank is just pricing in one Fed rate cut, in December 2024.

Demand, supply chain snarls, and fiscal stimulus also contribute to inflation

To be sure, money supply isn't the only thing that contributes to inflation.

As Bill Dudley, a former president of the Federal Reserve of New York, explained in an opinion piece for Bloomberg in February 2023, other factors influencing the US economy include consumer demand and stimulus money, and the Fed keeping rates "too low for too long."

"If rates had been considerably higher, earlier, the economy would have grown more slowly, the labor market wouldn't be as tight and wage and price inflation would be lower," wrote Dudley.

Fed Chair Powell had said inflation was "transitory" amid the COVID-19 pandemic but stopped using the term in 2022 amid persistent price rises.

The Fed will gather on April 30 to May 1 for its next policy meeting.

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• A Russian tank has gone viral after being spotted with a metal roof during an attack.
• Dubbed the "turtle tank" online, it's become a meme-like fascination for those interested in the Ukraine war.
• The modification hearkens to the last-resort practice of installing "cope cages" on tanks at the start of the war.

Ukrainian drone footage of an attacking Russian convoy has revealed an odd vehicle rolling onto the battlefield — a tank appearing to wear a metal tent on its head.

Jury-rigged with what appears to be a large metal structure resembling the roof of a shed, the vehicle was seen leading a convoy toward Krasnohorivka, a city in Donetsk, in clips uploaded on Telegram by Ukrainian forces on April 9. It's unclear when the vehicle was first deployed on the Ukrainian battlefield.

Ukraine said the attack was ultimately repelled, but the modified vehicle, dubbed the "turtle tank" online, has become an internet star for its comically hefty shielding.

Since the early days of the war in Ukraine, Russian engineers have been spotted fitting crude metal structures on their tanks to better protect occupants from anti-tank fire. Ukrainian tanks were later seen following suit. Military observers, doubting their true effectiveness, often call these "cope cages."

But the "turtle tank" takes things one step further, with metal sheets covering its body so extensively that the vehicle can barely turn its gun, as seen in a separate video uploaded by the open-source intelligence Telegram channel CyberBoroshno. The close-up shows what looks like a T-72 covered from front to back by the roof-like structure.

CyberBoroshno later posted that based on the footage, its team geolocated a hangar that housed the "turtle tank." It said Ukrainian forces had struck the building, and uploaded drone footage of the wrecked vehicle.

Since then, several similar Russian vehicles have been spotted online. A day after the "turtle tank" became internet famous, open-source X account Ukraine Battle Map posted a photo of another tank clad in a tent-like metal structure.

And on Tuesday, Ukrainian activist Serhii Sternenko posted two photos of another vehicle covered in pallets, but this time fitted with an electronic jammer to ward off drone attacks.

Sternenko said the Russian vehicle was spotted near Krasnohorivka, where the original "turtle tank" was seen.

Russia's defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

The extreme tank modifications come as Ukraine leans into strikes with first-person view unmanned drones, which are cheap and often piloted with explosives into weak spots of armored targets.

Drones are being used so extensively in the war that they've sparked interest in unmanned devices becoming a staple in modern conflicts elsewhere.

The evolution of such weaponry has, in turn, pushed troops to experiment to boost their chances of survival on the battlefield. On April 5, Ukrainian forces said they captured a Russian tank covered completely in electronic jamming equipment, though the vehicle was still seen being taken out by a first-person view drone.

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• Ukraine said on Tuesday that it used 7 exploding drones to destroy a Russian radar system.
• Ukrainian media said the destroyed system was a Nebo-U, which monitors hundreds of miles of airspace.
• Ukraine assessed that the Nebo-U, downed by cheap drones, was worth $100 million.

Ukrainian media reported on Tuesday that Kyiv destroyed a sophisticated Russian radar complex using seven exploding drones, in another apparent sign of how the cheap, unmanned devices are changing the face of modern combat.

Citing an unnamed source from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the Kyiv Independent and Ukrainska Pravda reported that the Russian system was a Nebo-U radar complex stationed in Bryansk, a Russian region bordering northern Ukraine.

It was monitoring Ukrainian airspace as deep as 434 miles past the border, per the SBU source. Ukrainian outlets reported that the destroyed Nebo-U was worth about $100 million.

The exact price of this Nebo-U is not immediately clear, but it's a newer system rolled out to Russian forces about eight years ago, per Russian state media reports.

With the elimination of this Nebo-U, the SBU source said, Russia now has "fewer opportunities to detect air targets along Ukraine's northern border."

Ukraine said this is the second Nebo-U that it's destroyed, with the first taken out in Belgorod, a Russian region near the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

Multiple variations of the Nebo, which translates to "sky" in Russian, are used by Russian air and ground forces. More modern versions, such as the Nebo-U and the Nebo-M, were listed at launch by Russian media as being able to detect aircraft, guided missiles, and ballistics up to a range of 372 miles.

In recent weeks, Ukraine has intensified drone strikes on Russian soil, attacking targets hundreds of miles from the front lines. On April 5, for example, it launched a large-scale drone attack on an airbase in the Russian region of Rostov.

Kyiv has also struck multiple Russian oil processing facilities in border regions, including Russia's third-biggest refinery, which is located some 800 miles from the front.

The Russian defense ministry and Ukraine's security services did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

The war in Ukraine has cast a spotlight on the combat deployment of first-person unmanned drones, which are inexpensive and often equipped with explosives that can be dropped on or flown into targets with precision.

The tactic has been used more widely in recent high-profile conflicts elsewhere, including by Hamas in its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and by Yemen's Houthi rebels harassing international ships in the Red Sea.

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• Elon Musk says Tesla has to do a "complete organizational overhaul" every once in a while.
• This, Musk says, would enable his company "to reach the next level."
• Musk's remarks come after a round of mass layoffs at Tesla, where it cut more than 10% of staff.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the EV giant needs to do a "complete organizational overhaul to reach the next level" every "half decade or so."

"That said, our executive tenure is unusually high at well over 10 years at Tesla," Musk wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Musk's remarks come after reports of mass layoffs at Tesla. The company is slashing "more than 10%" of its head count, per an internal memo obtained by BI. Tesla employs more than 140,000 people around the world.

In his memo to staff, Musk said that Tesla's "rapid growth" had resulted in "duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas."

"There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done. This will enable us to be lean, innovative, and hungry for the next growth phase cycle," Musk wrote.

This week's layoffs also coincide with the departure of two longtime Tesla executives.

Drew Baglino, senior vice president of powertrain and Electrical engineering, and Rohan Patel, vice president of public policy and business development, said on Monday that they are leaving the company. Baglino and Patel joined Tesla in 2006 and 2016, respectively.

The Tesla layoffs come at a rough time for the company, which has been grappling with declining sales and increased competition from Chinese automakers like BYD.

"The Chinese car companies are the most competitive car companies in the world," Musk told investors during Tesla's earnings call in January.

"If there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world," he continued.

Representatives for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

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• The United Arab Emirates experienced torrential rainfall and severe flash floods on Tuesday.
• The flooding was worsened by to UAE's cloud seeding practice to address water scarcity.
• The weather modification method involves getting clouds to drop more precipitation.

Torrential rainfall pummeled the United Arab Emirates this week, resulting in flash floods that have caused air travel delays, closed schools, and deluged homes.

Dubai International Airport — recently named the most luxurious airport in the world — was diverting planes as of Tuesday evening until the weather conditions improved, according to a statement.

Videos on social media appeared to show a heavily flooded tarmac, with large passenger airplanes taxiing through several feet of water.

The airport did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider about the videos.

Dubai got over 4 inches of rain by Tuesday evening, around the amount it typically gets in an entire year, CNN reported, citing United Nations data.

The UAE was playing rainmaker by cloud seeding

While images of extreme flooding can show the consequences of the climate crisis, this particular event was worsened by a direct attempt to play rainmaker — literally.

To address water scarcity in the typically dry country, the UAE started using a practice referred to as cloud seeding in the 90s and early 2000s.

Cloud seeding is a method designed to increase the amount of water that falls from a cloud. It involves identifying suitable clouds and then using aircraft or ground-based generators to introduce a chemical agent that facilitates the production of snowflakes.

Cloud seeding has been used in countries worldwide, including in western US states dealing with drought, like California, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, and Texas.

The practice has long been controversial, with critics dismissing it as an attempt to "play God" or being potentially harmful to the environment or public health. Scientists have not documented harmful impacts of cloud seeding, and recent studies have suggested that the practice works.

But according to Bloomberg, the UAE's cloud seeding operations contributed directly to the heavy rainfall that fell this week.

Ahmed Habib, a specialist meteorologist at the UAE's National Center of Meteorology, told the outlet that two planes conducted cloud seeding operations on Monday and Tuesday and that seven seeding missions had been carried out in two days.

"For any cloud that's suitable over the UAE you make the operation," Habib told Bloomberg.

Despite warning citizens to remain home during the heavy rain, the UAE government's press office said they were "rains of goodness," as the country has dealt with a rise in heat-related illnesses and deaths that some hope can be alleviated by an increase in rainfall.

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