  The search for life in the universe is a major theme of astronomy and
astrophysics for the next decade. Searches for technosignatures are
complementary to searches for biosignatures, in that they offer an alternative
path to discovery, and address the question of whether complex (i.e.
technological) life exists elsewhere in the Galaxy. This approach has been
endorsed in prior Decadal Reviews and National Academies reports, and yet the
field still receives almost no federal support in the US. Because of this lack
of support, searches for technosignatures, precisely the part of the search of
greatest public interest, suffers from a very small pool of trained
practitioners. A major source of this issue is institutional inertia at NASA,
which avoids the topic as a result of decades-past political grandstanding,
conflation of the effort with non-scientific topics such as UFOs, and confusion
regarding the scope of the term "SETI." The Astro2020 Decadal should address
this issue by making developing the field an explicit priority for the next
decade. It should recommend that NASA and the NSF support training and
curricular development in the field in a way that supports equity and
diversity, and make explicit calls for proposals to fund searches for
technosignatures.
