> Apparently folks in the USSR once wanted to find aliens because they assumed that, as aliens must be very smart, they’d be communists.

On the other hand, the conceit of Pandora's Planet (1973) was that the aliens were technologically advanced, but somewhat earnest and honest and dim*, so they encounter earth and get steamrollered by our advertising, conmen, and fads.

Fast forwarding half a century, I wonder if a Federation of Planets counterpart would have the memetic antibodies to resist assimilation via gamification dark patterns?

* this now seems less plausible to me than it did at the time; I'm guessing a large driver for developing (energy-intensive!) intelligence is spending much of your time around species that indicate one action but intend a different one.