It was odd for them to bring up a problem we likely have a solution to without us mentioning we might be able to solve it. When it was first introduced, I thought it was going to be a way to show Sphene we might be able to solve her problems without her having to just kill everyone, but I was naïve to think we'd try to solve problems with cooperation rather than violence because of the first half of the expansion.

However, they didn't do anything with it one way or another, so that makes me believe it will come up again in the future.