All good propaganda functions on the principle of minimal force and control. 2 examples:

1) People often claim that “journalists are consciously manipulating public opinion” In reality, they are hired because they sincerely have the desired beliefs, by managers, and managers of managers, who sincerely have the desired beliefs. In this way, 99.99% of the media pyramid operates sincerely — only 1 person at the very top of the media organization needs to curate the belief structures of everything below him. His circle of trust need never expand. Nobody ever needs to be two-faced or be “in on the lie”. Instead, everything is achievable via the processes of hiring and firing

2) Many fall into the idea that government entities will covertly attack their own people to justify foreign policy, retaliation, wars, etc

In reality, false flags are largely outdated military strategy. In most cases, the circle of trust for such operations would be too high for it to work well. Instead, when you want to achieve universal public support for a goal — the trick is to selectively allow those who want to harm you to do it — simply by getting out of the way. This only takes a few high level operators. With informational clarity, all they need to do is create organic weaknesses by e.g. doing training exercises on a specific day so troops are away, run updates, refocus intelligence gathering to other areas that ignore the attacking group, or indirectly provide the tools/factors necessary for the group to succeed. Then, when it happens, public support is assured.

For countries with sophisticated intelligence agencies, you can safely make the core assumption that a large scale attack only happened because they allowed it to, in order to achieve some specific and well planned end. Nobody beneath the very top level need know — so their reactions can always be organic and sincere. It’s also a simplistic error to assume outright evil in those who orchestrate such strategies. Instead, most have positive intentions but are militaristic means-to-an-end thinkers. Within their minds, they are trying to solve trolley problems with minimal lived lost.