It's fairly obvious about most of the stuff; he KNEW the Shivan's had a weird thing with subspace and that they weren't in any way, shape, or form like the Vasudans or Terrans, at the time.
The circumventing of the PVN and GTA blockades to Vasuda Prime, their conquest of individual jump nodes rather than any territory or resource, their appearance only after subspace and the 14 year war with the Vasudans, not to mention the Ancient artifacts the guys in Altair probably found. Factor in that GTA command boarded a Shivan transport, probably bagged a couple in the process (after that first group got raped), and have studied Shivan technology up close and personally...
It was enough to make a Hades-class destroyer mostly from Shivan technology in ST. Which is a lot more than you need to make a few statements.