What’s funny to me is that even if we find intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, we will still likely only have a sample size of one when it comes to intelligent life that can survive on this planet for any length of time without a lot of artificial help.

You need to add to this conspiracy theory the reason the aliens could breathe our atmosphere when whatever atmosphere they evolved to breathe could not possibly have the same composition. We also may have too much or too little UV radiation coming through, but almost certainly not the right amount. Their eyes may not be able to see things in the same wavelengths we do, giving us a huge home field advantage when it comes to just hiding from them. There’s no reason they would be able to withstand our amount of gravity either.