"The Russian disinformation campaign has already begun. There has been a 2,000 percent increase in Russian trolls in the last 24 hours," chief Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a briefing on Saturday.
U.S. forces launched targeted missile strikes on Friday at key military outposts in Syria, where the government is thought to have stored chemical weapons used in a strike that killed over 40 civilians last weekend.
Syria, along with its allies Russia and Iran, has denied the use of chemical weapons and Russia has suggested the entire attack was a fabrication by western forces.
Russia, which has troops on the ground in Syria supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad, is known to run state-supported campaigns used to spread disinformation online. Russia deployed the operation during the 2016 U.S. elections.
Federal investigators have traced a massive number of politically inflammatory online content from the election season to Kremlin-backed groups that make use of fake user profiles and pages on social media, including the Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency.
Comment: Nice try. The Internet Research Agency is really just a social media spam agency, not a troll farm. As for the 2000% increase in 'propaganda efforts', maybe it's because Russia is the only one keeping a cool head in the game and people are actually not happy with the US government's actions in Syria.