There, I was invited into the buzzing corridors of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), the nerve center of America’s nuclear arsenal, located at Offutt Air Force Base. This is the place that produced the Enola Gay and Bockscar, the B-29s that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the place where President George W. Bush had taken temporary refuge on 9/11.

When I arrived, I spotted mechanics attending to two aircraft on the tarmac. One was an E-6B Mercury, a nondescript plane that, if needed, can serve as both a communications relay for ballistic-missile subs like the Wyoming and as an airborne launch control for land-based ICBMs. Nearby was a heavily militarized version of a Boeing 747, the E-4B Nightwatch, which houses the National Airborne Operations Center, which, according to its mission statement, “provides a highly survivable command, control and communications center…in case of national emergency or destruction of ground command and control centers.” Its nickname: the Doomsday Plane.

STRATCOM—with its 150,000 service members and civilians—is led by an Air Force four-star, General Anthony Cotton, who ushered me through his sprawling outer office, swarming with airmen, sailors, soldiers, and Marines, before taking me into his inner sanctum, a hushed, wood-paneled oasis in the eye of the storm. Cotton, along with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Charles Brown Jr., is part of a trio of Black leadership atop America’s national-security pyramid. And it was a point of pride, clearly, that of all the Black four-stars, as Cotton told me, “there’s only been 10 in the history of the Air Force, and I’m number 10.”

I asked what drew him to the service. “Simple,” he said, walking over to a display case containing a folded flag with a picture next to it. “That’s my dad. He joined in 1942. As you can see, he was a diamond-wearing African American that was in World War II in the Army Air Corps, made the transition to the Air Force, and retired as a chief master sergeant in 1974. So I came out of the womb as a member of the military.” He was emotional as he recalled how, in 2000, his father passed away a month to the day after his mother. “He didn’t see me make lieutenant colonel, but I buried with him my promotion recommendation form.”

I found Cotton, from Goldsboro, North Carolina, to be open, gregarious, and quick to laugh—traits that might seem at odds with the solemnity of his mission. “I don’t want to walk the halls of the Pentagon and when people see me, they’re like, ‘Oh, there’s General Cotton, the nuclear guy,’?” he said.

Cotton, 60, recounted how he’d first felt the weight of command as a 22-year-old on his inaugural ride out to a missile field in Minot, North Dakota. “You’re jumping in that Suburban,” he said, “knowing that you’re responsible to execute, under presidential authorities, the most powerful weapon on the face of the globe. You see the humming of the launch control center and you see 10 green lights and know that on the other side of that green light is a Minuteman III, with warheads on board. It all becomes real at that point.” Cotton would eventually hold a string of lofty leadership posts, most recently running the Air Force Global Strike Command, responsible for the country’s bombers and ICBMs.

His job as STRATCOM chief: preparing and, if necessary, turning to the tools at his disposal, from conventional long-range strike weapons and multiplatform nuclear arms to joint electromagnetic spectrum operations, which involve exploiting and attacking enemy frequencies (as well as protecting our own). Being able to provide those options to the commander in chief “is what I do,” he explained, before taking stock of the geopolitical moment. “That’s important, especially now as we see the threat vectors to rules-based international order.” Translation: Over the second half of the last century, Western national security officials were preoccupied with trying to keep one adversary (the USSR) in check, even as the dueling nuclear powers ratified landmark arms control treaties. With those efforts now in eclipse and nuclear proliferation a chilling reality, America and its allies are currently contending with two near-peer opponents, Russia and China, as well as their own set of allies with nuclear aspirations, including North Korea, Iran, and, by extension, the Axis of Resistance—a term that encompasses armed groups like the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.