Imagine you have a credible imminent threat to your society posted by a danger to which the society is not familiar enough with to fully grasp and take seriously.
Do you wait for the threat to play out and take your chances with the society sufficiently changing its attitude towards it in time? Or do you galvanize things with a false flag operation that will cause less damage than the real threat but induce the much needed urgent action against it? Almost like a vaccine. Innocent people will die either way.
It is incredibly paternalistic in a way, and a morally gray area. Ultimately it is a lack of faith in the people the operation is trying to protect, a lot of times it is flat out wrong or backfires in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways - for example Iran.
And yet. And yet, not always. And when it works you'll never hear about it.
Thought exercise: You are a marine biologist who has become convinced that over fishing is about to cause a sudden, sharp, and potentially irreversible collapse in the sea food supply. Millions will starve. But meanwhile tuna cans remain cheap and abundant in supermarkets across the world.
This is a long standing serious issue but now it is coming to a head, do you wait for the crisis to unfold and hope international politics find a way to avoid it in time or..?