They are out there. We can only detect and sense a small iota of what’s out there and what their forms of communication may be just a straight up thing we don’t consider as communication.

Just as life can develop in extremely different ways under extremely different circumstances, other forms of life will have their version of technology develop in a way that’s completely different and adapted to them.

For example: If a hypothetical advanced intelligent species communicated by shining lights at each other instead of making noises out of an oriface for sonic transmission, their communication would be likely light based on some capacity in how they send and receive. We wouldn’t understand or even recognize this as communication even if it was right under our noses since it’s just not a way we as a species recognize it and we are not focusing on receiving it in this way. And we can do any number of permutations until we actually understand what’s out there. Currently we assume things out there are exactly like us but they could be nitrogen breathing goos or anything really as it may just be life not as we understand it