We know how we are handling space exploration. We send robot probes. So once you get good at space travel. You set up automated factories on an asteroid and just churn out probes. Scattering them all over the universe looking for radio waves, nuclear explosion and polluted planets.
Imagine what it must have looked like to the swarms of interstellar probe cruising between the stars, when we detonated Ivy Mike or when the Russians detonated the Tsar Bomba. They would all come running like moths to a flame.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
I feel I should point out that the civilizations who did this are probably long dead or just don’t care what the probes found. After thousands of years they are gone or have moved on. The probes are just on auto pilot.
I would like to believe aliens aren’t real, and a lot of shady shit in the usa (e.g JFK’s assasination) comes back to their pledged allegiation to a tiny fascist outpost in the middle east.
Since the dead/missing scientists are mainly if not uniquely employed at rocket science labs (or adjacent) my theory is that they were offed for refusing to make weapons for israel. Or kidnapped.
To me it makes sense that any shenanigans tie in to current events.
Could therefore also be the case that they’re kidnapping scientists to try and upload their brains to AI. This is a less neat theory.