[frankquist]

I am quite skeptical of this having to do anything with aliens, but the "they wouldn't need to hide angle" confounds me. It acts like the only motivation in an interspecies relationship would be minimizing vulnerability. The more vulnerable species would need to hide, the less vulnerable one wouldn't.

Is this genuinely the only motivation possible? I'd say that's a lack of imagination.

Scientists exploring animal species also often don't want to disturb their research subject, to avoid changing their behavior. An alien species might have a nonintervention clause akin to Starfleet.

Perhaps even, a certain property of one of our technologies or our culture is somehow dangerous to another species, who might have a philosophical disinclination towards conflict and thus they do not want to disturb us.

Perhaps their gear doesn't have much of a defense system given someone decided to cut some budget somewhere.

Employ a little imagination! It's probably all bunk but it's way more fun to look at news like this that way.