"1. Where are they? We'll you might be able to ask that with a more informed position if in fact we had surveyed even say 20-25% of the visible universe. How far have we gotten on that front? Not very far at all. We may be the only known advanced civilization in the Milky Way, but what about the other 100 billion galaxies. What about the earliest galaxies in the universe. Surely they have had enough time to develop some form of intelligent life. 2. Is basically the same question as (1) Why haven't we detected them yet? Well that's even easier to answer than (1) Most of our study of the universe has centered around looking for coded radio signals from space. This assumes they would have been broadcasting radio signals like our civilization has.
"For all we know radio could be the lowest known form of cosmic communication. Yes radio waves travel at the speed of light, but as we all know the speed of light is a cosmic speed limit and therefore is bound by the distances separating us. There must be a quantum way of communicating that bypasses this natural speed limit. Making trans galactic communication possible. On the surface Fermi's questions make sense, and i see the logic in what he is trying to say.
"However there are just too many unknown variables to make an educated guess on this subject. It is one of the biggest questions the human race has ever attempted to answer. Second only to how did all of this begin?"