Wasn't it?
I agree with you and Stephen Hawking, though. It would be lunacy to do that. 99.99 pct chance nobody would receive the message. 99.99 pct chance that anyone who received it would never be able to decode it. But reasonable chance anyone who received and decoded would use it against us.
My preferred message:
"We can't accelerate our X-23 Galaxy Destroyer to faster than 300 times C. Have you guys had better luck with that?"