ETI is already near Earth, either in the form of drones, UAPs, or UFOs—whatever you prefer to call them. That is the premise of the Contact Project. The project proposal is therefore simple: instead of broadcasting a pinpointed message to a potential civilization far, far away, we can use simple, inexpensive, and widely available omnidirectional antennas to invite communication from objects or phenomena in Earth orbit. Moreover, this effort should not be limited to a short period of time; it should be sustained and undertaken with the broad agreement of people on every continent.
The message in the Contact Project might resemble the following:
“A Beacon in the Galaxy: Updated Arecibo Message for Potential FAST and SETI Projects” https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.04288, by Jonathan H. Jiang, Hanjie Li, Matthew Chong, Qitian Jin, Philip E. Rosen, Xiaoming Jiang, Kristen A. Fahy, Stuart F. Taylor, Zhihui Kong, Jamilah Hah, Zong-Hong Zhu.
A potential ETI is, of course, capable of decoding any human transmission we are already broadcasting, but the point of the Contact Project is to address ETI directly, acknowledge their presence, and actively seek contact.
Demonstrating such openness would prove humankind’s readiness for contact. By doing so, we would not be giving away anything new—such as our position—beyond what we already broadcast. It would simply be a friendly hello, as envisioned by the Contact Project organization.