What is the dark forest hypothesis?

Straight from a Cold War Era Sci-fi movie and Wikipedia:

"The dark forest hypothesis is the conjecture that many alien civilizations exist throughout the universe, but they are both silent and paranoid.In this framing, it is presumed that any space-faring civilization would view any other intelligent life as an inevitable threat, and thus destroy any nascent life that makes its presence known."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis


Sounds a bit like the Romulans and Cardassians from Star Trek. Well, those were also conquering races.