Q drops leak intel in advance to the public, but why? What benefit is there to average people knowing some of this intel?

This is certainly not a means of communicating information through backdoor channels to actual actors; strong asymmetric cryptography exists, and this could be done securely and privately.

The cabal speaks openly and symbolically, hidden in plain sight, and their messages and plans are connected piecemeal; Q posts mirror that.

This is a mechanism to teach many how to read the drops (not Q's drops)—The Great Awakening.