1 Death by a Thousand Cuts: Is Russia Winning the Information War with the West? Ryan C. Maness Assistant Professor Naval Postgraduate School Department of Defense Analysis rmaness@nps.edu Abstract: Perceptions and misperceptions between Russia and the West have existed for centuries. With recent disagreements between Russia and the United States, the EU, and NATO over issues such as the Ukrainian crisis, the Syrian civil war, Baltic territoriality, and Arctic spoils, Russia has been utilizing an age-old tactic in a new battlefield: the manipulation of information in the cyber domain. Many Western media outlets, analysts, and academics have concentrated their efforts at looking at cyber conflict from the traditional Western perspective, defined as the use of computational technologies in cyberspace for malevolent and destructive purposes in order to impact, change, or modify diplomatic and military interactions between entities short of war and away from the battlefield. Yet the Russian perspective is different; the utilization of the manipulation of information for the purposes of promoting the Russian worldview and display of power in the cyber realm. In this chapter, I seek out this utilization by using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to demonstrate that Russian information warfare techniques are successfully influencing Western media outlets in that the latter are reporting the discourse set forth by Russian state media, social media outlets, and pro-Russian professional “trolls”, and this influence campaign is contributing to divisions in Western societies and electoral outcomes that are favorable to the Russian national interest. Keywords: Russia, Information Warfare, Cyber Conflict, Qualitative Comparative Analysis Presented at the 2018 International Studies Association Annual Meeting. Please do not cite or redistribute without author permission