I think the Borg were so much cooler before #StarTrek retconned that they have a queen and are therefore a hierarchy controlled by one mind, rather than a fully decentralized hive mind (I think that retcon comes from First Contact? which, possibly hot take, I very much disliked)

but like, the Borg used to be a dark echo of the Federation: a decentralized collective whose (seemingly) sole purpose is to force all other civilizations to lose all distinctiveness by joining them. almost like glimpsing a dark alternate timeline of what the Federation could have become, or could still become

and of course a decentralized Borg raises really interesting questions like “why does the collective always want to assimilate more, even though it’s presumably made up of minds that didn’t want to be assimilated?”. like do the Borg install a brain implant that hard-wires this desire? are the majority of the Borg actually people that like assimilation and genuinely want to force it on others?

maybe the Borg was initially created by a culture with nothing but good intentions, until some emergent property of {the networking system that connects minds in the hive} led to value drift that eventually created the remorseless expansionist Borg that we know today (which would add even more layers to the “dark echo of the Federation” angle)

I also just find the concept of a completely decentralized imperialist power horrifying and fascinating, and it’s something that I’ve never seen before or since in fiction (maybe for good reason, but still. most of my favorite scifi is all about exploring bizarre ideas - like “what would life on the surface of a neutron star be like?”)