That's a possibility, though it seems somewhat weak to me. I've read the theory in a few places, that Sony and the media were demanding answers, and so the administration gave them one. Conveniently, I guess, it is one that they assumed would not be believed whether they denied it or not (because who believes anything said by the North Korean government?).

I just don't know that Sony and the media industry carries so much weight that they can actually sway our government to make shit up. And, was a pleasant fiction even what they actually wanted? I guess George Clooney wanted it. And, I guess Sony wanted to be able to say, "See, it was a nation-state that did this terrible thing, not our horrendous security practices."

So, maybe it is this simple. And, others have mentioned reasonable theories about what the administration could get out of it being North Korea: Concessions from NK allies, the ability to ratchet up cybersecurity expenditures (as another arm of the military industrial complex), and redirection of attention from other issues. If the latter was the goal, it has certainly been effective. We're all talking about it, and many of us don't even believe them. So, it might not even matter if we believe the story, as long as we're not paying attention to whatever else they're up to.

I gotta get a new hat.

The theory I described is not that the Sony/the media pressured the FBI to blame someone, but rather that the FBI saw a high-profile cyber attack and internally decided that it wanted to project power by pretending that it can solve this type of case.

Or perhaps an individual in the FBI running the investigation wanted to project confidence to his superiors, and made a public statement. At which point the FBI felt that it could not backtrack and decided to double down on its confidence.

Or maybe there was a filing error where a low level secretary checked "North Korea, definite" instead of "Uncertain" on the paperwork, and the FBI is again doubling down on its original public claim.