Ok how about this scenario: It encodes itself explicitly as Turing machine instructions that are necessary to decode the later chunks of data. We would have t

Ok how about this scenario: It encodes itself explicitly as Turing machine instructions that are necessary to decode the later chunks of data. We would have to implement the program and run these instructions to get any meaningful interpretation of the data. It could be encoded in a way such that the entirety of the message needs to be processed through it before any of it is usable. In this scenario, in order to get any meaningful data out of the message, you'd have to execute arbitrary software. But I agree that simply storing the data in a computer wouldn't be enough to be a danger (I think?).