Given how the player can single handedly tip the balance of power with AI cores and the dominion-era colony items for his own colonies, I think there should be a little more political impacts.
Make other factions pay you for the colony upgrades you find in ruins the same way they pay you for AI cores. They should be more concerned about somebody being able to produce a war fleet out of nowhere with a nano forge. Finding an in-tact one should be a big event. Make selling one to a faction cause a spike in militarism, including the pirates ramping up raiding activity. Make installing one on one of your colonies cause a scripted spike in interest about your operation, perhaps pulling you into faction politics (i.e join the Persean League or Tri Tach because the Hegemonyis worried about a new independent colonist amassing his own fleet, or allying with the Sindrians to create an equivalent of OPEC to try to strangle the fuel market, or maybe strike a deal with the pirates where you protect each other from the legitimate factions).
Tri Tachyon is the go-to to sell AI cores because of the great premium they pay for them. Given how controversy surrounding AI technology is part of the lore, turning in cores should be more impactful. If you turn alot into the Hegemony, Tri Tach should contact you trying to incentivize you to grant them some; first with money, then with suspiciously technologically advanced unflagged warships. If you give them to Tri Tach, have Hegemony officers threaten that Luddic Path infiltrators in Hegemony intelligence might suddenly get their hands on knowledge of your activities. Turning them into the Ludds should have fringe benefits: maybe a ship full of pathers intercepts you and asks to join your "crusade against evil" to destroy more cores.
If you show excessive loyalty to Tri Tach, have them grant you even more financial incentives, and if they amass a huge hoard of cores they make a push to supplant the Hegemony as the dominant power in the sector. If you keep turning in alpha cores in the Hegemony, perhaps a political scandal should break out where they have been discovered to be making extensive use of them.