"That seems likely, but we don't expect the civilization to change subs-stantially as a result. Just the lives of the Amentans."

"Why would the presence rather than the absence of a caste, even one with a small share of the total population, not affect the civilization?"

"The castes role is in menial labor, which is getting phased out regardless, any role they have in the future will be a new one which their caste isn't directly relevant for - they could have been another caste and it wouldn't make a sig-nificant difference."

Sierra will elide over how the phasing out is the result of Amalien introduced technologies - those interventions are allowed and not sub-ject to scrutiny under the treaty. 

"In your estimation the individual members of the caste are unexceptional and not likely to have any particular effect on the other Amentans' progress through their development?"

"Hmm..."

Sierra takes a moment to think.

"The distribution of abilities of the reds is unexceptional relative to that of the rest of the population, at least as far as Amentans' pro-gress and development goes."

Sierra isn't sure but reds might be less sensitive to pollution, but that doesn't seem relevant anyways.

"Some might argue that the process of exterminating undesirables is an irreplaceable moral lesson for a civilization."

Yes, it's true, some people are wrong.

Sierra keeps her voice sounding calm.

"This seems very un-likely to sub-stantially effect the civ-ilization's growth or development."

Also the Amaliens won't let the exter-mination happens anyways - if they can't use transporters there are less grey area ways to help the reds.

"Can you explain how your model generates this conclusion?"

"I think that choosing not to do the extermination might change the sort of lesson a civ-il-ization could learn, but planning on doing it only to have someone offer a different way doesn't seem likely to have a similar effect."

"Hm. What is your understanding of the phrase 'warp-related'?"

"Within the context of the clause and situation, I think it mans related to the application of warp tech-nology. Meaning use of warp technologies primarily for travel."

This bit of the arg-ument is sorta shaky, though it doesn't need to be accepted if the other parts are.

"The fundamental warp equation is unambiguously covered even though writing it down will not actually transport one any distance at all."

"I think that sharing the fundamental warp equation would have effects related to the application of warp tech-nology. Not direct effects, but indirect ones matter too I think."

"Transporters wouldn't have in-direct ones I think."

Hm... she does want to be open here but also is nervous about the stakes.

... It's her job to do hard things sometimes.

"I don't know if this point fully works cause there's a def-inition of warp-related technology in another part of the treaty that includes Trans-porters reg-ardless of us. It seems plau-sible that my inter-pertation of warp-related is what was meant in this bit by both sides though, and I do think it would be reas-onable for the Federation and the Amalien Expanse to decide to treat it that way."

"Have you already checked the language in all of the canonical translations?"

"I think we've only checked the Amalien and Federation Standard ones."

"The Vulcan text has a footnote which clarifies that it's meant as 'superluminal transit and allied technologies'. Now, you could argue that transporting people a meter to the left is not relevantly superluminal, but it is clearly an allied technology."

"Yes, that's included in the other versions as well. But the footnote refers to the first earlier bit that mentions 'warp and warp-related technology' and it doesn't say that it applies to all the uses of the term."

"It's conventional to understand a terminological footnote to apply throughout the document unless there is positive reason to contend otherwise."

"That seems like a reasonable objection, though I do think the intended spirit of the bit about was meant to focus on FTL applications, even if the close-est reading implies different. Feels like that bit of it we could agree to clear up and decide either way."

"Mm. I can't commit to anything on my own, of course. How might we verify that Amentans would not perform this ritual ostensibly motivated by their own religious convictions if they had their own transporter technology?"

"We are using the transporters in order to decrease the oppression of the reds and aid their flourishing. When we first told the idea of using trans-porters to Amentan gov-erments they told us it would be useful for helping make the genocide less hard for them."

"- the ritual isn't sufficient to alleviate the, uh, temptation?"

"It doesn't, I guess."

"I sorta hope they realize 'ventually. Some things seem to get better with time for differ-ent places if you give them enough things and help them enough. Just takes a bit to grow up." 

"Of course the position of the Federation is that outside help doesn't produce robust 'growth'."

"And the position of the Amalien Expanse is that trying to help is important. We've made mistakes when we tried, but mostly the people we've helped are still usually happy about it."