If your speculation is that consciousness is rooted in the hardware,

That's not my speculation at all. We are not hardware. Organisms do not function like machines.

I haven’t heard of scientists definitively knowing the source of consciousness,

We know the source of consciousness - it's organic. It's rooted in our physical existence as organisms. What scientists want to understand is the "how" part... and we'll never understand it if we think of it as an engineering/design problem because evolutionary processes reqires neither engineering nor design. In fact, I'd argue that this level of complexity is impossible to achieve through engineering and/or design processes.

which is why I continue to maintain that we don’t know

You may continue not knowing if you wish... but it's a very mundane non-mystery as far as I'm concerned.

I think they’re behaving like cargo cults, building something that superficially resembles the thing they want

You're assuming that consciousness is what they want... I'd say that's an assumption that is not based on the true interests the parasite class has. Their interests is in control - not creating consciousness.