WASHINGTON — The Pentagon and intelligence community are expected to recommend soon to President Barack Obama that he break up the joint leadership of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command to create two distinct forces for electronic espionage and cyberwarfare.

The potential move is driven by a sense that the two missions are fundamentally different, that the nation’s cyberspies and military hackers should not be competing to use the same networks and that the job of leading both organizations is too big for one person.

Obama was on the verge of ending the “dual-hat” leadership in late 2013, but was persuaded to hold off when senior officials, including then-NSA Director Keith B. Alexander, argued against it on the grounds that the two organizations needed one leader to ensure that NSA did not withhold resources from CyberCom.

Three years later, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are pressing for the split, with Carter seeking to build Cyber Command into a full-fledged fighting force that has its own network accesses to conduct attacks. Clapper, officials said, supports the idea in part to reduce tension over which force gets to use the networks — the spooks or the warfighters.

And with the White House apparently eager to get it done before Obama’s term ends, some officials said that the decision appears all but certain.

Carter and Clapper also favor having a civilian in charge of the NSA, as at CIA. That would be a break from tradition. Since its inception in 1952, the NSA has been led by a military officer.

The proposed decision reflects a growing debate over how to organize military cyberoperations as they mature and diverge from the intelligence realm that birthed them.

Adm. Michael Rogers, currently the head of the NSA and CyberCom, last week told an audience at the Intelligence & National Security Summit that “I believe in the long run the right thing is to keep these two [organizations] aligned, but to separate them.”

But on Tuesday, Rogers clarified his remarks to suggest now was not the time.

At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the chairman, Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, noted Rogers earlier this year supported retaining the “dual-hat” relationship. “Is it still your professional advice” that such an arrangement is in CyberCom’s best interests? McCain asked. “Yes,” Rogers replied.