The Dark Forest question

I think the dark forest theory is well-justified. I loved this analogy of hunters trying their best to stay hidden in the dark forest and sneakily opens fire on those who accidentally exposed themselves.

What happens when the powerful and the powerless encounter each other? Most of times, the powerless gets exploited or entirely eliminated - there are many examples in human history. If, on a rare occasion, the powerful has some compassion towards the powerless, most likely it is because the powerful sees similarities between the two groups. Without these similarities, why would they care about the other group of beings?

At some point of the trilogy, the humans were called "tiny bugs" in the eyes of the powerful predator. Well, here's what we do to tiny bugs and their home:

Casting a Fire Ant Colony with Molten Aluminum

Why would we care about what the bugs think? We kill them, we exile them, because they are nothing like us.

As a bug in the eyes of a powerful alien race, it is far safer to stay anonymous in the dark forest and observe the unknown afar in silence.

yes, i think it is possible.

Because the unknowable is terrifying, hiding is the only option. HP Lovecraft and others like him capitalized on this in their fiction - the truly terrifying is not some boogeyman with fully described powers of evil. It's the ungaugeable enemy. The unknown enemy. The confrontation against an entity whose strength is immeasurable.

So yes, I think the theory is sound. I don't know (and can we, really?) if it implies the existence of aliens or not. But it certainly works as a psychological metric for interaction among hypothetical groups. The application to alien life is a strong one - if the theory holds in any cases, it would be that one, should such life exist. Because we would not know, there would be no criteria to determine where we stand. Announcing one's presence is dangerous, and only those who are confident in carrying out total annihilation of enemies (or those who are ignorant of the Dark Forest concept) would ever show themselves willingly.

Due to the possibility of technology explosion. Look at the human history in technology development. An ant could be come a giant ant with nuclear weapon in 1 million years. '1 million years' is very short in the universe.

I don't think a "dark forest theory" exist. There are many ways to avoid it. You can just look at earth history, such:
1. "cold war", races threat each other with annihilation so no one attack first or they will all be destroyed. Obviously destroying a plant doesn't mean the other race can't do a counter strike from other secret location.
2. "NATO": A group of races join forces to declare on galactic rules which apply on all races so no one is allow to attach. If someone attack all the rest will retaliate. This is the most possible scenario IMO since all races want to spread across the stars opposite to stay hidden on the home plant as dark forest suggested.
3. There are many more...