Progress in warp field research though has resulted in significant energy reductions though - everytime a more efficient formulation is found its a step on the way to a possible practical system.
After all, if it was easy then everyone would be doing it.
We've definitely achieved progress on this sort of scale with transistor density. Not that it's at all similar, but it's interesting to observe that we do seem to be able to occasionally bring things within our grasp that would have sounded absolutely silly a lifetime ago.
Did we though? From milli- to nanometers is "only" 9 orders of magnitude. 10^43 J is about 30 order of magnitude from practical application than the first transistor was. Also, warp bubble generation might be more like electric motors, which have gone from ~2% to ~95% efficiency and will never ever surpass 100%.
Well that supposes that they currently exist, that they're close enough and that they want to come here.
Maybe it is feasible to build an FTL engine, but maybe it can only feasibly go at like 4c. That doesn't make it very easy to drop by our solar system and have a look at what all that radio noise means, even if anybody's heard it.
After all, if it was easy then everyone would be doing it.