The No Agenda Show podcast has been following this idea for over 15 years. One of their many listeners wrote in years ago who claimed to work in a glowie agency and mentioned a "six-week cycle" that allegedly exists in 3-letter agencies: something big has to happen every month-and-a-half to justify their ever-increasing budgets. If they have to make that happen (as they have with almost all "radicalized extremists" they have "caught" since 9/11), they make it happen. If something organic happens, that can be part of it, too.
The listener might have been full of it. But the idea is pretty interesting if you understand how government agencies get funded.