Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Red Herring, Hold the Mustard
The simulation data is a huge red herring in Insurgent. Tris hides the data, which is on a hard drive, between her dresser and the wall to keep it from the wrong hands. It instantly falls into the wrong hands—namely Peter's slimy mitts—and Tris's violent reaction gets her punished by the Amity.
And for what? Tris ends up destroying the hard drive anyway. She finds out that not only are there other copies of the data, but the copies of the data don't even matter. There's a "data network" (40.5) like the cloud where everything is stored.
Tris's fixation on the data is ultimately shortsighted, a result of the Dauntless tendency to focus on the nearest thing—whether it be Tobias, the data, or some cake—and do whatever it takes to protect (or eat) it. How much would the story change if Tris were able to look at the big picture sooner than she actually does?