Have suspected the same for many years, i.e. ZYA in an intentionally dodgy geopolitical situation to give people playing the Spear of the Patriarch start a fun challenge to save their most closely aligned faction (I thoroughly enjoyed it when I played that start anyway). Particularly since there's an apparent backup plan (CUB faction) to ensure players still have access to all of ZYA's blueprints, ships, etc even if they're wiped out by the Xenon.
If that is the case, it didn't work particularly well in my current game (started the same day 7.50 was released). This is the current map, just over a week since game start. ZYA still strong & own the same number of sectors they did at the start (lost Rhy's Defiance, but gained Heretic's End).
In ALL of my previous games would expect ZYA to have lost far more than that by now, potentially down to less than half of the sectors they own at game start. Have done very little in the region; no miners, no trading, no stations, just a few ZYA v ARG war missions (mostly ARG station demolition), so it wasn't that I was in any way the decisive factor in this. Do know the precise distribution of Xenon forces is a random factor controlled by game seed, however they do seem particularly weak this time round.