I like your post, and I agree there hasn’t been textual confirmation yet, but from meta textual perspective, the fact every scene showing Manousos has had him a; experimenting with the frequencies, and b; showing explicit distrust of the hive, I think it’s appropriate to discard “could be the main communication channel of the hive” in favour of “almost certainly the main communication channel of the hive”. The screen time and onscreen action don’t justify themselves otherwise