I think waking people up is the goal. Wake them up and piss them off.

Waking people up serves to help the govts identify outliers within their populations. That way, they can take out the outliers or neutralize them more easily. Rather than trying to push some new agenda and being surprised by some unknown, intelligent enemies of the future ruling cabal, you can essentially make these outliers who will oppose the future cabals register their own minds - kinda like guns - with honeypots such as some controlled opposition big-name conspiracy theorists. If you wake up, they'll know who you are, what kind of advanced - thus threatening - things your mind can do, and where to find you.

Pissing people off can be used to guide the minds, thus the hands, of those you want to frame for criminality and violence. It's also helpful in that it helps to, over time, cause the pissed off people to ready themselves for a fight. In the end, when TPTB want to, they can cause the various groups that have been preparing for a fight go to war with each other, thus repopulating without getting their hands dirty or being seen as responsible.