The irony is that he was both successful and a failure, a contradiction inherent in nuclear launch control.

From a deterrence and military perspective, you want a robot on launch control. Every time, on orders, without fail.

From a human and ethical perspective, you want a thinking individual with agency. Able evaluate orders and possibly disobey them.

Curious at the height of the Cold War (and now), what percentage of launch officers were expected to disobey orders to launch. It had to have been >0%.