This touches on something that always fascinates me in “us vs them” alien invasion movies. They usually assume an alien technology only slightly more advanced than ours regarding their ability to sense things.
Oblivion - there is no way they could have gotten that device into the ship. Same with Independence day. Even with our modern technology today they would have been hard pressed to do it.
This is also what made Cowboys and Aliens less believable.
Still, I enjoyed all three very much. You just have to suspend disbelief a bit.
I think about this sometimes as well and laugh at it. Consider:
An army from 1916, just 100 years ago, would get completely demolished by an army today. If the current day army fought smart and fought with victory as the goal (over, say, minimizing civilian casualty) it might not sustain a single casualty. That’s only a difference of 100 years.
Now, consider the age of the universe. Current estimation has it at 14,000,000,000 years old. An intelligent civilization that is 99.999% similar to our age to us would be 14,000 years ahead of us. They would look at us the way we look at the people at the end of the Stone Age.
There is a presumption here. I am presuming that technological advances continue to increase over time and that we are not at or near the peak of what can be accomplished technologically. If that is true - and we have no reason to believe it is not - then an alien army that is 99.999% similar to our age would be capable of destroying us with almost no effort at all.
Now, I’m not saying any alien race will kill us. It’s possible that a civilization that advanced has moved past the need for conquering. It’s an unknown and the idea that we’d be able to put up much of a fight is, well, unbelievable.
So, suspend your disbelief and enjoy it when Jeff Goldblum defeats a superior alien force with a computer virus. That’s what escapist fantasy is all about, after all.