act with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning blame on a second party
A U.S. Douglas A-26C Invader painted in false Cuban Air Force livery depicting those used in the Bay of Pigs Invasion undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 in April 1961
A false flag operation is an act committed with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning blame on another party. The term "false flag" originated in the 16th century as a strictly figurative expression for an intentional misrepresentation of someone's allegiance, and centuries later also came to be used literally for a ruse in naval warfare whereby a vessel flew the flag of a neutral or enemy country to hide its true identity. The naval tactic was initially used by pirates and privateers to deceive other ships into allowing them to move closer before attacking them. Showing a literal false flag was later deemed an acceptable practice during naval warfare according to international maritime laws, provided that a vessel displayed its true flag before commencing an attack.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).