Project Damocles begins.

Under suggestions from Nikola Tesla, the US starts working on a weapon that might end the war.

The United States lagged behind the European states in terms of thaumaturgy, but only initially. Its almost endless resources and not being responsible for any major front (and waging the war on another continent altogether) allowed it to focus its attention on many simultaneous projects launched under authority of the Secretary of Thaumaturgy, Nikola Tesla himself. Because of that, US prowess on that matter improved by leaps and bounds.   The biggest program was the so called Damocles Project. The creation of a massive water power plant on Colorado river, with intention of using it as a massive power source... for something. The Department of Thaumaturgy was internally divided between using it to power up a massive weapon system (like, an improved version of first Death Rays created by Tesla) and the creation of a free energy system proposed by Tesla himself (that supported that option).   This system, if successfully executed, could allow the owner of the Dam to control weather and electric currents, causing thunderstrikes at will. This, if connected with a worldwide system of lightning rods, improved massively by thaumaturgy and connected further to batteries, would mean essentially harnessing an almost infinite, free energy supply that could be then used to power up both the industry and the energy-based techmaturgies of the US.