[x] Plan: Ware the Ancient Rush
Hopefully, these Eldar are just practising an abundance of caution, anticipating (not unreasonably) that the humans would open fire immediately if they announced their presence, and not preparing a raid.
[X] Old Ship: Denva Public
While I think that W would be a fine (and potentially better) steward, I fear putting the emphasis on one individual, no matter how competent, risks creating a single point of failure should anything happen to W and control presumably reverts to some tug of war between her "cabal" and the Denvan government(s).
Presumably the "cabal" and W could work out some arrangement to keep Juvent access for themselves in return for funding Juvent research for the wider public or something similar in order to smooth over the transition process.
So, 50 years for 60,000 people, dedicating their entire production to it? 500 years for less than a million on a planet of billions? I'm not sure how many years of exponential growth in manufacturing is required to get to a point where it could be rolled out to everyone at the same time, but I suspect more than any unaided human lifespan.
This is going to be a continual drain on exponential growth regardless of what we do. The civilizational incentive is to ignore it and build manufacturing full speed, but every decision maker's personal incentives are to build juvenat for themselves.
So I think that not having anyone publicly getting this stuff to begin with means that it won't be built: it cannot be shared equally and the anti-democratic nature of having only a few people get it is going to be very obvious to the voters. As long as 'nobody' has it, the equilibrium is for no one to be allowed to build it. But as soon as some people have it, then everyone will want it and it becomes a direct tradeoff against building factories and defenses.
While I understand your logic, I can't help but feel like prioritising raw numbers of civilisation output over the quality of life of citizens is the exact kind of Imperium-style thinking we are trying to avoid, and even if we succeeded we would be undermining our the wider effort to entrust and empower the Denvans with their own futures, which I fear could be very damaging to relations in the long term if the extent of what we concealed (if we attempt to remove Juvenat), and more significantly
why we concealed it becomes publically known.
However, I also see major practical issues with just shutting down Juvenat supply - all the media moguls, political leaders, and other "cabal" members W has brought together to help encourage planetary unification from the shadows, who would
very quickly turn against anyone who they would perceive as betraying them by shutting down the immortality production they have known and enjoyed for decades at this point (even if the life-saving advanced medicines produced for themselves and their families/loved ones might be sufficient "collateral" to cause some to hesitate).
Considering just how primed a public that has just widely embraced an ethos of technological sharing and (arguably) utopianism would be to react negatively to a narrative we are shutting down their capability to reverse engineer or even continue using existing Juvevant manufacturing "for their own good"? The politicians would leak the location to the media, the army would be immediately ordered to move in to try and prevent us from destroying/shutting down the Juvent supply (which may not work but would be tried nevertheless), followed closely behind by tsunami crowds of public protesters desperate to save the chance for a longer life for themselves and their loved ones (even if the chance they themselves would be one of the lucky 50 is infinitesimally small), and/or that future generations, their children and grandchildren, might be liberated from the tragic tyranny of old age, infirmity and death (even if only partially with a diluted and/or primitive Juvent version).
We could probably "win" the battle of destroying the Juvenat production before the Denvans could secure it, but we would almost certainly lose the war of public opinion (in the immediate term and in the future) and risk poisoning our future relationship with Denva, potentially irrecoverably, going forward.
