In "Brothers", Data takes over the ship, at the direction of Soong's signal. What always confused me about this was what the signal did to Data.

On the one hand, it seems unlikely that Soong was directly remote controlling Data, since stealing the *Enterprise* is a rather... criminal act. Aside from the obvious problems, it seriously endangers Data's career in Starfleet. While Soong [does not like this career very much](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/109597/was-commander-datas-potential-wasted-on-the-enterprise/109695#109695), I find it hard to believe he would intentionally sabotage it given their relationship. And Data appears to use a lot of knowledge of the *Enterprise* that Soong would not have (e.g. that you can turn off life support, lock out the computer, etc. as well as how to do all of those things)

Data himself does not remember what happened, so obviously he was not controlling his own actions, which we already knew because Data would not voluntarily steal the *Enterprise*.

What I'm left with is that Data was under the control of some kind of program that was simultaneously smart enough to steal the *Enterprise*, and dumb enough to steal the *Enterprise*. It probably had a directive like "Get Data to Terlina III by any means necessary and make sure nobody follows him down." **What I don't understand is how Soong could possibly think this was a good idea.** This program demonstrates a profound and breathtaking lack of ethical judgment, which is particularly confusing since we know Soong specifically programmed Data to be ethical and knows how to do it correctly. Soong knew (or should have known) that Data could have been in any number of situations in which other peoples' lives were at risk. There was obvious potential for a seriously bad outcome (which nearly happened) and Soong had the ability to prevent it. Why didn't he?