You’re right. It’s easy, when talking about issues of cosmic scale, to tar with too broad a brush.I’ll amend my earlier comment.
At risk of appearing obtuse, (I do get what you’re saying), do we really know that is always the case? 
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Actually, I’ve thought about this. The single best way to do this close to home isn’t necessarily to fund NASA research into such a project.
It’s to fund NASA research into building a software stack so just anybody can build an automated observation station with off the shelf parts.
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Within the physics we have, yes. It’s clear we’re missing at least some of the puzzle (which we call quantum gravity), and there’s always the possibility it changes what we know to be possible or there’s something else that simply hasn’t yet occurred to us. So no, physics is never about absolute certainties. As the statistician George Box famously said, “All models are wrong but some are useful.” But that’s different from saying that the physics we have allows information exchange without a classical signal. It would be speculating about as yet unknown physics. Which is fine for science fiction, but IMHO a poor compass by which to guide empirical research such as SETI.
Also, not obtuse at all to ask sincere questions.
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But what if you can exploit a pre-existing classical signal? Like finding widely separated entangled particles, and manipulating one particle to send a message through the other?
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The problem is that the information is carried in the classical signal. So if I understand what you’re asking, yes, an alien civilization could send out entangled qubits to the far reaches of the universe and then send a quantum encrypted signal. But the only advantage is that the signal would be secure against eavesdropping. It’s no faster than sending a hard drive, and slower than just beaming a light-speed signal since you first have to send the hardware at near light speed, and still send light-speed or slower classical signals after you deployed the network hardware.
In the unlikely but very cool situation eventuality that we or anyone else ever discovers a way to send information FTL, it won’t be because of the EPR result. In fact, the best candiate in current physics is an Einstein-Rosen bridge, or wormhole. But as with black hold singularities, they present questions that exceed the limits of our present state of knowledge.
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And of course, there is the case that other aliens may be intelligent enough to not broadcast their location, lest some violent warlike aliens (such as ourselves) might find them. Or that they developed communications using distributed meshes of tiny transceivers, so no signal ever has to be strong enough to travel more than a very short distance.
In terms of sci-fi, I like the idea that light speed is still the fastest way to send a signal, but with FTL travel, the quickest way to get a message to another star system is to deliver it by courier (or a combination of messenger drone shuttles and relay buoys). It makes for interesting stories. But it’s another case where if they communicate that way, the aliens wouldn’t be broadcasting radio signals.
I don’t think radio waves work that way. A million 1 watt mobile phone transmitters still add up to a megawatt.
Are you saying that if, for example, the typical range of a bluetooth device is 5-10m max (with no interference or degradation), but there were a million of them operating in a network, the signals could be clearly understood at 5 to 10 million meters from the nearest part of the network?
I doubt that you could get bluetooth to work over that range, because latency is important too, but the signal intensity of those million transmitters will add, as if you had one big transmitter.
Its like detecting infrared emission from individual atoms over hundreds of light years. Each individual atom emits very little radiation, but taken together, you get a strong signal.
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Hi, I am the author of the paper and I am quite surprised about ts effect.
Nobody is talking about the Occator image effect, what do you see in that picture?
Gabriel
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It brings to mind an experiment where a bunch of SETI researchers created a message and distributed it at a conference and not one person decoded the message. This was a message between individuals of the same species working in the same field who knew exactly what to expect.
So assuming the aliens are not Vulcans or Klingons, of course we are not going to be able to communicate with them. Its going to be like us and dolphins where their intelligence is a matter of opinion and how delicious you think they are.
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You know, the more I think about our universe (or rather, about the bit of our universe that we can observe and have a little bit of knowledge about) the more I suspect it’s just the equivalent of a middle school kid’s project for science week in a higher dimension.
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Previously on BB:
I’m not qualified to comment on the entanglement bit,* but a faster-than-light signal sent by any means will appear to have gone backwards in time to some observers and hence risks violating causality, unless something like the Novikov self-consistency principle holds.
For a dramatic interpretation, see Charlie Stross’s Singularity Sky, which features communication via quantum entanglement, FTL travel, and a weakly godlike intelligence in the far future that vigorously polices its personal past for such violations.
* In actuality, I’m not qualified to comment on any of it, but I feel I have a firmer layman’s understanding of some parts than of others. I may be deluding myself.
NORAD has been catching “fast movers” — even to the point of scrambling SR71s — for a long time now.
I agree totally with your post. There are now three tapes declassified by the DOD that clearly show F-18 footage (including audio in two of them) of American fighter aircraft chasing UFOs.
So yes, cosmic blind spot? You betcha!
Just remember that there’s a reason why the MOST sure science ever is of anything still classifies that as a “theory.” We only ever think we may know how something works, but science doesn’t make decrees — even if our friend Gulliver often does…
Edit: Which I am of course glad to see he clarified a bit in a follow up post. 
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he means that dozens of dumb questions add up to a good question?
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assuming there isn’t any atmosphere there, scattering the signals before any of them head for space.
The skeptic community’s stance is that they were experimental aircraft (either America’s or another country’s).
I’m skeptical of that since it seems like such a huge leap from existing tech, but I have to admit it’s a possibility.
But yeah, I strongly suspect the reason the government doesn’t want to talk about them is because “they exist, they are more advanced than us, and we don’t know what they are despite 50 years of study” wouldn’t be very reassuring.
Governments sell themselves as being the big boys, the adults, and most importantly, the monopoly of power…
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