Even if you ignore its inherent worth (and a major theme of the books is the inherent worth of things that don’t look or think like you), it was still an amazing discovery with incredible potential. IMO it was less dangerous that the (admittedly much less innately terrifying) sympathetic aliens, who were capable of deep space travel, unpredictable, warlike, and also very difficult to communicate with.

(I was actually asking the opposite question by the end of the book - once it was convinced to play nice, why wasn’t everyone signing up for it?)