Weyland Yutani Motives

I agree, david acts with a real purpose to understand the engineer civilisation and utilise its tech, and it turns out they are a mortal threat to humanity. 

Weyland is quite assertive with the engineer, he wanted a deal done, but mankinds level is well below the engineers in many ways, so we have no leverage, having the goo or xeno levels the playing field.

i think david is essentially an undercover infiltrator, who is ordered to take any opportunity that comes his way, so throw the engineers out their own party!

funny though, wouldnt you expressly tell any rescue party that the planet was contaminated? Unless you wanted to experiment that is.....

I'm not sure if David is an undercover infiltrator, Id guess he's more 'free agent' now and is operating on his own terms.  Perhaps any experiments he does are purely for his own knowledge/agenda?

That being said, Walter may learn (or know already - or possibly other crew members?  It also looks like J Franco's cryo pod was tampered with so who knows?) a few things on his trip as will the crew and any broadcasting/black box type communications will surely be being sent back to WY?

For me, this aspect of the franchise has always aroused curiosity as it begs the question - just how much do these guys really know?

If the former is the case, as per the OP, then it gives some meaning to what otherwise looks like a cold, merciless, greed driven pursuit.

I concour David is a free agent from WY and on to grander things after learning the Engineers true motives

Walter on the other hand, the way he just watches the Neo attack, like Ash studies Kane at the dinner table

He will try and steal Davids magnificence for WY and will turn at some point in AC....

Given the Engineers chopped off David's head, killed off Sir Peter Weyland (his "father")and managed to kill Shaw, I wouldn't blame David for his motives.

@deepspace

isnt it possible that davids 'feed' is always being monitored by weyland corp? They did a report on the prometheus expedition and know about the goo. David may not be aware of this, its not part of his awareness, so that makes him a knowledge vector.

ok, he may not intentionally be waging war, but hes gone and done it, all the more data for experimentation? 

I hope david hasnt made a mistake and forgotten any engineers out and about in space who may want to retaliate against him and humans, would they really allow someone to pull something like that off? I doubt it.

@Jonsey - I've said that all along about David, but something else has driven his motives to an even darker place 

As far a WY goes, I still feel Walter will become an Ash type at some point, but David will put a stop to the company's plans and use Walter to further his own plans

Back to the original post, I love the idea of Androids actually uses Alien as their own weapons to kill off the Engineers/humans. After all, I think the Androids are the ones who gain control, all lost but they win. 

I hope they do flesh out W-Ys motives and it something like you suggest @Deep Space. W-Y have always been portrayed as the evil greedy ruthless corporation whose sole motives are money and bio-tech. Kind of two dimensional. If they are trying to obtain a xeno as a weapon to actually defend humanity against an external threat it would give them much depth and shine them in a new light. 

Approaching it from multiple dimensions is potentially a good way of looking at it.  Having several complicated objectives would help explain a few of W-Y's seemingly illogical actions.

One of the company's motives is obviously profit, yet we've seen how Weyland initially set out for immortality.  At some point, the company decides to put Sir Weyland's foolish quest for immortality on the back burner & becomes more interested in the bioweapons.  I think for certain members of W-Y, it is in fact mainly about Greed at this point.  Hades is a very greedy God in Greek myth, and the company took a huge financial hit after the Prometheus mission.  However, W-Y learns more about the Engineers, and it all becomes more complicated.

The shareholders and investors would have been furious when they didn't see a return on their initial investments in the Prometheus project.  It might be correct to say the company is mainly driven by profit at this time.  Although even at this early stage of their knowledge about the bioweapons, that's not all there is to it:  they would wish to study the bioweapons and other forms of Engineer technology further.

It might upset Ripley to learn one of the primary objectives is to study the creatures.  Basically, Burke lied when he said they weren't sending her back to LV-426 to study it.  The people at Hadley's Hope got a chance to study some facehuggers, so Burke wanted to go collect the specimen and have a look at the creatures before he decided to do what he did.  Even Bishop seemed a little interested in studying the creatures further, which is exactly what Ripley was worried about.  The androids get all weird whenever they see one of the creatures.

Acquiring more data about Engineers could always be useful. 

It's possible the company believes there are currencies greater than money and values the acquisition of knowledge above the accumulation of wealth.  Money has no "real power," and those who worship money are worshiping a false deity.

Hades sat by and watched as Prometheus stole the fire that Zeus' group stole from the Titans in the first place.   So he feels that Zeus punished Prometheus too severely for it.  

Greed would essentially be viewed as a way to motivate people like Burke, who don't necessarily see what they're doing as evil.  Hades would think his brother Zeus is almost as bad as he is, because Zeus' faction of Gods tried to overthrow their parents/creators (the Titans) in the past. 

ETA:  the company names or code names many of their ships and colonies after ideas from Greek mythology.  For example, the Olympia colony Ripley was born at, and the Aletheia colony mentioned in the W-Y report.  I feel like MUTHUR chose to send the Covenant because she studied mythology, just like Dr. Shaw did:  it can be viewed through the lens of the Judeo-Christian myths, OR pre-Christian myths from before the time of Rome.  NASA began the tradition of naming space crafts after Greek concepts when Apollo made the first flight to the moon.  Over time, the company begins to align itself with Hades more than the Titans ("We are the Gods now").  They code name LV-426 "Acheron," as it's part of the Underworld.

Allowing the colonists to nickname the colonies makes colonist types feel like they're an important part of something.  The ones at "Hadley's Hope" chose that name themselves.  It's Hades who's associated with 'the Covenant' in Greek myth.   

Atlanteans are said to be the first round of mankind created by Prometheus, but Hades would explain that Atlanteans died over 500 000 years ago.  All traces of the Atlantean civilization were likely scraped from the surface of the Earth by glaciers during the last ice age, so there's no hope of Dr. Shaw ever finding archaeological evidence.  Maybe if the company's archaeologists's venture deep into Earth's subterranean oceans, they'll find it one day.  This was possibly looked at, but the company gives up their search for Atlantis.  'Hope' is only an illusion that locks us in immobility; it's the last monster that Pandora unleashes from the box in the myth...

@ Babylonxeno  - I think it's possible that the Co. have been monitoring David's feed but unlikely as I imagine he can chose to contact or not.  That's pure speculation though so who knows?

It is intriguing me to see just how the Covenant ends up on Paradise as it isn't their intended planet to colonise.

Perhaps it is just coincidence or perhaps they have got this info. from somewhere, and currently the Prom mission and David are the only likely sources . . .

Could be pure chance though but that would seem a stretch.  I'm definitely thinking though that the Nostromo was sent out that way with a clear intention and that WY knew exactly what they were getting the crew into . . . always seemed that way to me though to be fair.