The only evidence we have is that advanced intelligence development requires a tribal war making disposition driven by vanity and envy. An advanced civilization out there would not likely be our friend. We're asking for it broadcasting non-random appearing signals indiscriminately. Our Milky Way could very well be a nasty neighborhood.
The ‘others’ probably figured out a long time ago that they could communicate instantaneously (or at the very least order of magnitude faster than light speed) by using separated/paired particles Even binary code can be sent instantaneously from one star to another via this paired particles method using ‘action at a distance’ technology.
All this may be true, but if they are more advanced than us, presumably they would have been at our current level some time in their past. They would have had to discover radio, studied space spectroscopy, and had some form of SETI. We should be able to pick up some form of coherent radio signal. Again, the more apparent habitable planets there are, the greater the chance that we should see this, but don’t.
Or a graveyard. War is a huge technology driver, as you noted. I doubt many civilizations (if such existed) would get past their nuke stage. We probably won’t. Or rather we’ll knock ourselves back to the Stone Age and then start over unless God intervenes. That is probably a common story (again, if other intelligence existed).
This also might address why we don’t hear electromagnetic transmissions from anyone else: once you invent radio, nukes follow fairly rapidly on a geological (let alone cosmological) time frame. Therefore, most civilizations (if they existed) probably transmit at fairly low power for a fairly short time. They then wipe themselves out or knock themselves back to their Stone Ages.
Cheery thoughts, eh?