Can the Borg Join the Federation? | Star Trek

The Borg seem to have made a request to join the United Federation of Planets, but is this even possible?

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[TemplinInstitute]

Possible Spoilers for Star Trek Picard Season 2 in this video!

[alexchow]

You may ask the question: "Can the Borg join the Federation?", but you forgot to ask the question: "Can the Federation join the Borg?"

[TheNN]

Y'know, Lower Decks made "teaching the Borg Queen empathy" as a joke. Picard said, "Great idea! Let's do it!"

[occultatumquaestio]

I'm pretty sure the Jurati Borg are a separate splinter group, akin to Unimatrix Zero or the Cooperative, and not the main Collective. In the case of these splinter groups that allow individuality, voluntary assimilation, and hopefully voluntary deassimilation; then membership to the UFP is possible but it shouldn't be rushed. A defensive alliance or provisional association membership should more likely be established. The main Borg Collective though is an antithetical mirror to the UFP, so membership with that group isn't possible.

[pigpig]

I'll be honest, I always liked the Borg being the ONE enemy that can't be reasoned with. Peace and negotiation has won out with every other enemy of the Federation, but the Borg were different. They were the one situation in which ideals must be put aside, and the enemy must simply be destroyed. I liked having that bit of necessary brutality among Star Trek's idealism

[LENZ]

Jurati's Borg seems to be a separate faction that presumably only assimilates volunteers or the dying.

[mattwho]

The Federation already has Cybernetic races, Bynars, so it’s not too great a stretch. The primary issue between the Federation and the Borg is consent to be assimilated. If the Borg (under new leadership) agree to absorb only those who consent to be assimilated most of their problems resolve. And there would be those who want to join, even in the Federation’s utopia some just don’t feel whole.

[mella]

This seems like a shaky hypotetical: the group that is asking for provisional membership is not the same as the Borg of old, but we simply do not know what happened to them during the 400ish years of divergent development. We obviously can't tell until we learn more about them.

[KamepinUA]

It was confirmed that it's merely a group created by Jurati Queen that wants to join, that works similarly to or is the Borg Cooperative. This is more or less confirmed by the fact that the Borg didn't send more ships to shield the galaxy from the beam by itself, because that Supership is the only ship capable of doing this and needed Starfleet help.

[juimymary]

The only iteration of the borgs that could even remotely qualify to join the federation was the Cooperative from Voyager or anything else that would be like them, under any other circumnstance the honest and smart answer would be absolutely not.

[MikMoen]

"Your opinions will adapt to service mine."

That is literally online interaction in a nutshell.

[lostmarble]

Even if the Borg adapted to meet the requirements for joining, it's hard to imagine this isn't a ploy to gain a strategic foothold in federation space and then revert to their assimilating nature when it's most advantageous to do so. Even forming non-aggression pacts and slowly gaining the federation's trust would seem disingenuous; since the Borg likely plan things out centuries in advance, they could be the best non-aggressive neighbors in the galaxy but we could never ever trust them.

[THEAdmiralXizor]

A "provisional" membership in this context means 'you can navigate our space without an immediate Vulcan Hello'...

Also, Jurati expressly created a new collective - which is why no one has heard of her...

[AndresRamirez-fiuw]

Me at the protest outside of San Francisco holding a sign that says. "No Admittance to the Borg!" And another that says "Remember Wolf 359!"

[pavarottiaardvark]

Hot Take: The Borg are a single entity and thus would apply to join Starfleet in the same way Nog did.

[Diablo-D]

Last time I was this early, Jean Luc was still Locutus

[tomxaros]

the thing is, logically, those borgs are a different collective than the one we've seen so far... they arrived through a space time portal and they started in the 21st century from a borg queen of another timeline... so the regular borg must still be there scattered in the delta quadrant, but those new ones arrived from somewhere else, having developed for 400 years parallel to the regular ones.

[Treveli]

If I was writing the lore, the Borg Union (my headcannon name for Jurati's group instead of the more 'sinister' Collective) would be small, especially compared to the Collective. Instead of forced assimilation, it's voluntary, either offered to non-Borg, or to drones in the Collective that show signs of 'disharmony' and potential independence. It's possible to have a gestalt consciousness for the Union, but the individual members are still individuals capable of acting and thinking for themselves. There's been Borg splinter groups before (and they could come back as having joined or allied with the Union) that regained their individuality, but still used there own group's 'collective' to guide their overall actions for the Greater Good. As for the 24th century tech from La Sirena, doesn't matter, because the smart thinking would be to keep it well hidden. The Collective has numerical superiority, and risking ANY of that tech being assimilated would risk the future timeline. Buried deep inside a planet, far outside future Borg space, and rigged to vaporize down to the molecular level if it's threatened.

Borg joining the Federation should, if done right, be a huge story. Imagine Reagan announcing the Soviets are joining the United States. How many Federation member worlds would threaten to leave, and all the governments outside the Federation that have suffered from the Borg turning hostile. The Federation has it's own 'collective' pushing for the Greater Good, but there's definitely a point where individuals will plant their feet and say 'No! That's too damn far for me!'.

[MrChupacabra]

As was said, if the 'Borg-rati' Queen gives all the 'drones' independence, first, then the Federation should consider allowing them to join.

Real world fact is, though, I don't think the writers have thought about this anywhere near as deeply as the Templin Institute has, which is a shame.

[uzunaruMelonness]

In regards to a splinter group, I think that it is possible.

But as a whole, I agreed that The Borg shouldn't be included. It is highly likely that a betrayal or importation of slaves is in the future. The Borg needs to maintain its numbers. Indirect involvement of piracy is encouraged.

And this will cause embargoes and conflicts between the Federation and The Borg.