White House considered cyberattacks against Libya

In preparation for the U.S.-led military strikes against Libya earlier this year, a small circle of presidential advisers discussed - and eventually rejected - using a cyberattack to disrupt and even disable the Libyan government's air defenses, The New York Times reports.

The discussions were tabled, however, when administration and some military officials balked due to concerns that such an attack could be used as precedent by Russia and China to launch their own cyberattacks.

"We don't want to be the ones who break the glass on this new kind of warfare," James Andrew Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Times.

The officials were also concerned that there wasn't enough time to plan for the attack and were unable to resolve whether President Obama had the authority to authorize it without informing Congress.

In the end, Americans used conventional armaments against the Libyan air-defense missiles and radars used by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's government.