<i>&gt; How could aliens have the ability to destroy us if they didn&#x27;t have their own technological civilization?</i><p>Note that my comment specifically mentioned hive minds. A civilization has many cooperating&#x2F;competing individuals. Most of civilization&#x27;s problems are epiphenomena arising from this fact. What if most galactic factions aren&#x27;t composed of many individuals, but are effectively one distributed mind? What if they regard our social pathologies as pestilential?