Before the structure became an icon of 1960s counterculture, it passed first through the crucible of the Cold War’s military-industrial complex. (Domes sheltered radar stations that served as the United States’s early warning system against a Russian bomber strike, for example.) And, because the Cold War was a global conflict that reached deep into every aspect of American life, geodesic domes built overseas at world’s fairs served as symbols of American technological prowess. Fuller’s dome design swiftly became a symbol and instrument of American power.