It’s game theory, mathematics. Let’s say every player has 3 actions: do nothing, expose yourself and destroy the player you aware about. Your goal is survival. If you expose yourself in this game and there’s at least one player choosing „destroy“ action, you loose.

Now, of course there’s a question of applicability of this model: 1. are there other players? (if the game started, we won’t know until we observe destruction event - but that’s falsifiability) 2. do they have means to destroy you? (we may find out) 3. do they have motivation to destroy you? (we may find out) 4. can you protect yourself against unknown level of technology? (we may find out).

This theory meets scientific criteria, it’s just that those criteria require level of technology that we may not reach in thousands of years.