Now more than ever every facet of society relies on the NII to facilitate critical information related activities. Entities around the world have not ignored this transformation and seek to steal, disrupt, and interdict the U.S.'s key information processes. It is this reliance on the NII and the security threats it faces that force policy makers to answer the question who should protect the NII? Seemingly, the DoD is well positioned to take the lead role in protecting the NII. However, authorizing DoD control over NII protection ignores many issues. Analyzing vulnerabilities to the DII illustrates the gravity of the problem the entire NII faces. The NII faces an increasing threat from hackers, and rogue agents bent on damaging the DoD's information based processes. Countering these threats requires developing a comprehensive NII protection strategy. Correspondingly, developing a strategy for protecting the NII requires defining several strategic concepts of Centers of Gravity, objective, end state, and key tasks. Along with strategic concepts, several critical environmental paradigms such as changing mediums of warfare and the source of future power also effect decisions of who should protect the NII. In light of environmental paradigms and strategic concepts, the issue of whether the DoD can serve as lead agent in NII protection begins to take shape. While arguments such as experience in matters related national security appear to point toward the DoD playing the central role in NII protection, the underlying rationale is limiting and shortsighted. The NII's distributed nature, constitutionally mandated rights, and the needs of a pluralistic society, all argue against the DoD playing a lead role in protecting the NII. While the DoD should not play the lead role, it does have the capacity to take leadership in several key sub-task areas. First, the DoD should be the lead agent facilitating discussion about national incident and consequence management plans. Second, the DoD should be responsible for protecting a core set of functions related to critical incident and consequence management capabilities. The monograph concludes by recommending the US develop a national campaign plan to protect the NII. This campaign plan should address how deterrence would be used as a strategy, the development of an organization solely dedicated to implementing and managing NII protection plans, and to what extent defense will be the only method utilized to protect the NII.

ADA 357866 Approved for public release; Distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)