[giantg2]

"They'll know at a glance whether we're a threat just by our scale of energy output,"

Except we don't use our most powerful energy source (nuclear weapons).

[krapp]

They would still be orders of magnitude past that. Probably Kardashev type 2 at least. A couple of nukes probably aren't going to scare them.

[friend_and_foe]

I think advanced aliens would laugh at our kardashev scale and say "well it's a lot more nuanced than that" especially considering we don't see a single shred of evidence that anyone out there has a dyson swarm. It's probably the wrong metric to use. If they're up there, whatever they're up to, it's probably really interesting and not just about energy consumption.