User blog comment:GrandMethuselah67/Lore Sheet: The Democratic Imperium of Neohumanity/@comment-4867780-20150815022926/@comment-26322734-20150815063155

Well, yes and no. The Replication Initiative is an attack strategy (stategies at this point are totally determined by super intelligent A.I.). So it's not like they're using this all the time, every time. It's actually because of this that Ozmand doesn't use the Replication Initiative unless the U.R.H. is facing an overwhelming threat. That and the process of replication isn't exactly instantaneous or fully complete. When things are scanned, they're just replicating what was scanned, not the entire civilization's technology. Also consider that the U.R.H., post-Hive War, is the most advanced stable civilization in the galaxy, so that's why they were able to expand to the size of the entire milky way.

Though the "yes" part comes in the rate of technological innovation. Due to A.I. being assured to be on Humanity's side, new developments are actually achieved very rapidly, though not so rapidly that it makes technology gained obsolete. That and "overminds" like MAGNUMOPUS and OZMAND tend to filter the "stuff that isn't particularly useful" from the "stuff that is extremely useful". So the technology and data that the U.R.H. ends up getting more often than not are developments in technology, science, and mathematics that'll prove useful in the long term, not the short term.