Still too over the top. Probably the easiest way to do it would be a Dyson “mirror”, maybe two cone-shaped mirrors built around a star that focus the radiation

Still too over the top. Probably the easiest way to do it would be a Dyson “mirror”, maybe two cone-shaped mirrors built around a star that focus the radiation into a disk, or a parabola on one side, something like that to harness the power and project it where it's needed (most likely to power solar sails for traveling between stars). So probably we should be looking for stars with irregular brightness that's not due to planets or instability. At some point they should also find lines connecting stars where the dust is hotter than it should be. They probably won’t find any of this, which is perplexing.