So hiding is the most rational - the only - strategy of survival.
This is a paranoid and cynical strategy that doesn't win out in the known history of life. What works is grow, expand, mingle, maintain - assimilate but don't annihilate.
Uhh, yes it does. You are thinking of humans. Humans can mate with other humans. They can assimilate. Now, think of invasive species. What do they do? They don't mate with the natives, learn their culture, respect and give them space. Quite the opposite on all counts. They do what they do in their resource game. They might not out compete the natives and they might peter out. Or, they do out compete the natives, and before long, there aren't any natives or that careful equilibrium that was established beforehand.
The dodo bird is an example of something that was isolated and then got steamrolled when the herd came around.
You can always zoom out and look at the bigger picture, it's not even about individual species but life as a whole. "Hide and isolate and wall off" is not successful in the long run.^ Your only chance is to keep up with the herd.
If we look at human civilizations, which ones successfully isolated and hid from (real or hypothetical) bigger badder ones? Neither isolation nor annihilation is ever a winning strategy. Fear is the mind-killer.
^ Save for things like extremophiles that have found their way into a tiny niche that nobody else wants. They may survive but they don't flourish and prosper.
South Sentinel Island, famously. Still existing in the stable equilibrium established a millenia ago. Oh but they don't have iphones. Big whoop. If our modern supply chain falls apart due to climate change, not an unrealistic bet, we are finished and will probably kill ourselves and you and I will die in the violence to come. They will not even notice anything, and will exist as they have existed for millenia more. Their civilization and state of technological development is actually far more robust than ours.
Or in a more biblical sense: do unto others before they do unto you.
> Did you get to read the Liu Cixin’s second 3-body-problem novel? - The Dark Forest. Well some of you did …
The author of this post then provides a good summary of the idea in the next few sentences, but remember there is an entire book around this premise (and a first book that sets it up and a third book explores it even more).
Interrsting take, and possibly (probably?) true of humans. But is it true of other (alien) sentient species?