We should take care in communicating with aliens, recommends Stephen Hawking. They might communicate back via pillaging and destruction: "contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity."
Hawking picks up this classic sf theme to help us think through possibilities of ET interaction, with some grounding in recent exosolar exploration. He offers a classic space opera vision:
I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.
Hawking then helps explain this grim view through two ironic/cynical/realistic views, based on ourselves. For one, considering the present:
We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.
Then a glance at history:
If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.
Some security-minded brooding from Drezner and Cavanaugh.
(thanks to Randy McCall via Facebook, and everyone else! "Alien artifacts" photo from fotographix.ca)
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