Exactly. The real story out of this article is how deeply in bed publications like Space.com are with these government space agencies. If the spending is turned off, they have nothing to report. So we get silly articles like this about how we are going to find intelligent life in space by 2040. How do they know? Do they have a crystal ball?
The government funded SETI for a time, but I don’t think it does anymore. I think a majority of the funds SETI gets is from private sources.
I confess I don’t know the history of SETI from past to present.