Possibly. On the other hand, the delays in research and coordination may be so large that they basically negate the advantages of being united. An expanding orb

Possibly. On the other hand, the delays in research and coordination may be so large that they basically negate the advantages of being united. An expanding orb of viciously competitive societies would probably make them pretty damn efficient at deception, murder and hostile takeover. A hive mind that has never had to harden itself against what's basically an expanding sphere of vicious viruses may be easy prey that gets utterly annihilated. To put it in another way, I think an expanding hive mind needs to develop an immune system of sorts if it is to stand up against nimbler (virus-like) societies, but it's hard to see how it could succeed effectively without extended exposure to the latter. So I feel there's a kind of catch-22 going on: if we expand without extensive synchronization, we create competitors out of our own offspring, but competition breeds efficiency, so even though the system is a horrible Malthusian hellhole on the inside, it is pretty strong as a whole. But if we try to avoid this and expand as a hive mind, we have to expend a lot of overhead on synchronization and an immune system, but we don't really know what the potential threats are, so the result will be brittle.