"The other side has a very gifted chemist."
Well, they couldn't have all the experts, right? They knew this but they at least hoped those people wouldn't bring the bad things, but that was wishful thinking in the end.
Anyway, regardless of whether it came from one source or not, it was very possible that they would not be the first or last to invent things that could cause Alterra (and other territories) some problems.
This was another reason for the consolidation, to be honest, in order to be alerted early on whether another territory was doing something big and negative.
It felt a bit overreaching, and in Terran, this might've been frowned upon, with all those debates about privacy versus safety back then, but it wasn't like they were doing anything too disruptive.
