The Interstellar Squid have arrived. They're hanging out around Saturn (cf "largest comet ever"). Even after a century of preparation and propaganda, there is a large fraction of humanity who refuses to conceive of intelligence other than human. This is the last gasp at preparing them.
That, or the political corruption has gotten so rank that they're scraping the bottom of the bin for "lookit the shiny!" distraction stories.
Oh, and let's not forget about the Squid's notoriously poor sense of direction. They've probably been circling Saturn for the past decade thinking it's Jupiter. I wouldn't be surprised if they show up in a few millennia, asking for directions to Earth.
So, let's cut our Squid friends some slack. Interstellar travel is hard, and they're doing their squid-best.
> He fished for Curious Squid, so called because, as well as being squid, they were curious. That is to say, their curiosity was the curious thing about them.
> Shortly after they got curious about the lantern that Solid had hung over the stern of his boat, they started to become curious about the way in which various of their number suddenly vanished skywards with a splash.
> Some of them even became curious – very briefly curious – about the sharp barbed thing that was coming very quickly towards them.
> The Curious Squid were extremely curious. Unfortunately, they weren't very good at making connections.
-- Jingo by Terry Pratchett
Technically, yes.
With very little success, alas. Pesky gravity.
if anything, scalar interstellar travel is SLOW
the russians called them "useful idiots".
The simplest answer is the most probable.