If life is really ubiquitous throughout the Universe, how come we haven’t seen any evidence of our fellow biota yet?

Several of my colleagues are now finding increasing evidence that indeed, life is a natural emergent of the periodic table of the elements and therefore should be very common throughout this universe (assuming a potential multiverse scenario where our Universe is perhaps finely tuned).

If my colleagues are correct though, then this implies first, that life would be ubiquitous (given the sheer size of the Universe) but also, quite interestingly, showing no evidence at all of the technological “break out” that our own species has managed to achieve over the last several hundred years.

There are no SETI-radio signals as of yet (and it’s been several decades of searching)

Is life a natural emergent, but higher cognition much rarer?

If we look on the Earth itself, I find it intriguing that there are many big-brained species (Whales and Elephants come to mind) but only Homo sapiens have developed the technology to project evidence of themselves beyond the immediate planet (to say nothing of our solar system).