“You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage.” —Ripley

In a way, the real xenothreat in aliens is capitalism, and the hubris of human militarism and colonialism in space. There's a section of my dissertation about this, so here's a preview.

The Alien films are full of resource extraction, terraforming for profit, war and weapon profiteering, and generally unethical corporate behaviour of the kind you would expect under capitalism and space imperialism.

The space soldiers in Aliens assure us they will easily destroy whatever they encounter, and boast in colourful language that nothing could possibly challenge or threaten them or their noble cause. And yet they’re proven so wrong on their first encounter with the aliens.

Weyland builds AI to position himself as a new god. Consider the space-capitalist mega-infrastructures devoted to extending and preserving his white male colonizer body. In later timline (earlier films) Weyland still lives on, as the immortal vampiric corporation: Weyland-Yutani

Prometheus and Covenant reveal that the alien threat encountered by Ripley and friends is likely the product of an earlier human generation’s hubris and Weyland’s intention to seek out humankind’s creators, the "engineers" of life on earth.

The universe of threat they encounter in space turns out to be as violent and harsh as the corporation Weyland controls. It’s not “nature” however, as Prometheus reveals, but design, and Weyland's own hubris in trying to be a god that begins the process.

Despite repeated encounters with this deadly threat, the corporation keeps the knowledge secret just as they cover up their own violence against the disposable crews.

The spectre of an extraterrestrial threat posed by the alien, the xenothreat, is actually revealed to come from a threat that is familiar, capitalism, which has been exported into space only to return transformed into horror.

Throughout the Alien series labour is often coerced. The colonization is corporate, their lives are corporate. Housing, food, futures, possibilities, entire worlds themselves are corporate and militarized.

"They ain't paying us enough for this, man." —Drake

"Building better worlds," is a Weyland motto. Worlds made in the image of their creator, the corporation that owns them. A corporate culture that sends people into harm's way to try and extract profit from that danger. A return on the investment regardless of the consequences.

The Alien series is a story about workers who are never compensated for what they endure, in a nightmare future where every aspect of life itself for those living and working space has become a commodity.

The worker's bodies and genomes are commodified as well, as Ripley herself becomes the product of many attempts to create weapons in space. This happens repeatedly, with her, with Charlie, with the colonists.

Working class resistance always appears, and it's not the Alien that stops it, it's always capitalism that ends up putting their lives on the line for profit and treating them as disposable.

"It's not in my contract to do this kind of duty. Now what about the money?" — Parker

The true evil in the Alien universe is our own capitalist culture expanding into space, and all the horrors represented by the Xenomorph turn out to be nothing more than the offspring of a parasite born from the greed and hubris we brought with us as we left Earth for the stars.

Space capitalism.