Initially I did a spit take because it just seems so silly, just preposterous. But on second thought Seth Abramson is not a jokester he's a pretty serious researcher so let's wait and see but could this be the beginning of alien apocalypse dystopia blah blah blah.....??
The main reason I'll never believe until I see it is pretty close to yours, but also: if aliens have achieved interstellar travel, we are literal ants to them. We are less than ants, really. Why would they ever maintain secrecy? Like, what kind of weaklings or cowards would they be that they're hiding from organisms that are less than ants to them? Maybe if they wanted to do some kind of scientific study and didn't want to disturb us?
Yeah also a good point. Another thing is, we're capturing them? How exactly? Why are they such fuck ups that they manage to crash all the time also lol. The counter argument for this is to initiate contact without intimidating us, which I guess is plausible but idk seems a little far fetched