In Star Trek: Picard, one of the main locations is the Artifact, a derelict Borg Cube located in Romulan Space, which is the site of a joint project between Romulans and the Federation aimed at reclaiming Borg drones from the Collective.
While I can understand the humanitarian goals on Federation part in trying to reclaim the so called xBs,
(even if it sounds rather hypocritical to play the role of the do-gooders with ex Borg drones while on the other hand acting as racist xenophobes with both Romulans and Synths, respectively after the Romulus and Mars incidents)
I do not fully understand what are the Romulan real motivations behind this Borg Reclamation Project, especially since they seem to be in charge of both the site and the project, while the Federation seems to be just barely tolerated and allowed on the Artifact only due to a previous treaty, and presumably also because of the balance of power between the two states.
They also have to deal with the unresolved problem of their refugees, so it seems unlikely that an effort to reclaim xBs in to new citizens could be put into place before addressing the precarious situation and needs of the already "free" citizens, if there were not other motivations.
Romulans, and specifically the Tal Shiar, which de facto runs the site, are not known as putting humanitarian issues very high in their scale of values, also considering that given the opportunity,
they did not hesitate one second to eject the drones in to open space, when it made sense from a strategical but certainly not from an humanitarian point of view,
so the whole "let's help the poor drones" seems to be a rather feeble and unconvincing motivation on their part.
At first I was thinking that the research on the Artifact could be related to
the strong hate that the Zhat Vash, the secret Romulan cult, bears towards synthetic life (at least in anthropomorphic form) and in some way to their ultimate goal of exterminate it.
But in the end, while I admit that this is not entirely clear to me, it appears that these two things were unrelated.
Please note that I'm explicitly referring to the drone reclamation here, not to the broader research of Borg technology, which could be accomplished also without the effort in helping the drones and which is a credible goal also for a militaristic secret police?
So, what are the real motivations of the Romulans in the Borg Reclamation Project? Is this related to that other thing?