Predicting the development of new industries is hard. Predicting the direction of procurement dollars is not nearly as hard. The U.S. government didn't go to all the trouble of creating a National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center just to let it sit idle. It has to have something to do in order to justify its budget.
The construction of an Internet kill switch gives the cybercommand a reason to live. Granted, the wording of the proposed legislation (currently named the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010) would locate the authority to activate this kill switch in an Office of Cyberspace Policy in the White House. Realism will require the enabling infrastructure to be somewhere else because managing the Internet from the Oval Office just isn't feasible. The SCATANA order to ground all air traffic on 9/11 ultimately came from the FAA, not the White House. Executive leadership should be allowed to paint in broad strokes. Execution is for those agencies like the FAA and DHS that have their hands on the controls.
Some lucky team of prime contractors will make a lot of money enabling the NCCIC with the necessary kill switch technology and protocols. If the enabling legislation isn't passed, the program will simply move to some agency's black budget anyway. My task as an investor and analyst is to figure out which companies are in the best position to line up this work.
