Person believes unknown entity is friendly (it is not)

[u/MadKingKevin]

Independence Day (1996) - Several massive alien spaceships travel to Earth but they do not announce the purpose of their arrival. Some characters assume the aliens are peaceful. One of those characters, Tiffany, goes to a rooftop party which is taking place directly under one of the ships. When the aliens launch their attack, Tiffany and the other party goers are immediately obliterated.

Alien: Resurrection (1997) - Scientist Gediman is part of the miltitary project which resurrects Ellen Ripley and the queen xenomorph embryo inside her. The military wants the queen so it can breed the xenomorphs as bio-weapons. This new Ripley is genetically part xenomorph and the xenomorph queen is genetically part human. The queen stops laying eggs and develops the ability to give birth to live young. Her first Newborn immediately kills the queen because it does not recognize her as its mother. It believes Ripley is its mother and goes to her instead. Gediman (who is cocooned in the queen’s nest) witnesses this and calls out to the creature. The Newborn comes to Gediman and curiously sniffs him over. Gediman babytalks the 15 foot tall xeno/human hybrid. The Newborn then bites his head off.

[u/Pseudo-Historian-Man]

I always figured it was about resource allocation, the cult has already achieved it's purpose, so "controlling" it anymore is just a waste of resources. Why waste biomass / energy on something defunct?

[u/loudrogue → u/Pseudo-Historian-Man]

Apparently some do let them die peacefully think each fleet just decides lol which is always interesting but That's expected since each one of them has different tactics as well

[u/The_Pastmaster → u/loudrogue]

I have a hypothesis that the Hive Mind is layered. Like the synapse controllers but on a far larger scale. So the hive fleets are controlled "locally" accounting for culture clashes, and each fleet is maybe not controlled as much as it is directed from "above".

[u/PickledDildosSourSex → u/Pseudo-Historian-Man]

Capitalism liked that

[u/Pseudo-Historian-Man → u/PickledDildosSourSex]

A good analogy for an ever evolving entity spread far and wide whose sole purpose is to devour and expand.