All the quotes miss the simplicity of 3 rules of Cosmology or whatever it was called in the trilogy.

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The essence of the Dark Forest theory:

1. Survival is the primary goal of any civilization.

2. Life expands to fill all available space, but resources are finite. Roughly speaking, like humans cutting down forests to expand cities without caring what happens to the ants living there — if expansion is needed, it’s done.

3. Progress is unstoppable. If one group hasn’t mastered fusion yet, they will say in a thousand years — and then they’ll come for the others because of points 1 and 2.

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The author builds the novel on the idea that we shouldn’t be sending signals into space, but rather stay quiet and avoid drawing attention. Because in his view, once one civilization detects a signal from another, the safest move is to eliminate it immediately — without taking the risk of finding out whether it’s friendly (for now) or already not.