It seems like the "minor race steals all tech secrets from major race" and the "so and so breaks off from empire to form new empire" events seem to be highly bugged and introduces tons of advanced tech that is in no way possible to exist at that period of the game.

It also looks like minors have an uncanny ability to magically research high-end tech that also is way out of place early on in games.

I've personally been playing with minors turned off for these reasons, I hope it's fixed soon.

I just had a game where the pirates achieved that as well, and this was not even the dreaded "pirate event." It was just the normal every day 'there are now pirates preying on commerce' event where a few scattered ships occassionally appear to attack lightly defendant targets. It also occurs when the Jagged Knife appear. I've not had the minor race event because I turned them off. This bug is widespread and seems to occur whenever a random faction or race appears in the game.

This bug actually introduced some interesting things into the game I'm playing. The Jagged Knife broke off, and had all this cool stuff. They took 51 planets (10 of which were mine) and everyone immediately declared war on them. I took back 9 planets (the Korath managed to hijack a planet near their space). The funny thing was I immediately started stealing endgame techs. Black Hole Erupters, Ultimate Invulnerability Fields, Zero-Point Armor, and Aeleron Missile Defense.

It was kind of insane. The strange thing was, the Jagged Knife computer player seemed to be completely inept. He never made a single ship. It was damn odd.

So the Arceans aborbed the Iconians, Korath, and a few other minor races. They then declared war on me. So I've been handing them their ass. Fun game, though.