The Sunday Telegraph reports that the Department of Home Land Security has invited Sci-fi writers to help save the world from terrorism.

Anti-terror chiefs in the United States have hired a team of America’s most original sci-fi authors to dream up techniques to help them combat al-Qaeda.

Ideas so far include mobile phones with chemical weapons detectors and brain scanners fitted to airport sniffer dogs, so that security staff can read their minds.

The writers have also put government scientists in touch with Hollywood special-effects experts, to work on better facial-recognition software to pick out terrorists at airports.

The Department of Homeland Security has set aside around $10 million – one tenth of its research budget – for “high impact” projects dreamed up by the best brains in futuristic fiction.

Let me confess up front that I am not a Sci-Fi writer. But I have read Ender’s Game and admire Orson Scott Card. I also have many boxes of the genre buried in the basement. It goes without saying that I could use the $10 million.

So here is my wild scenario. It does not involve sniffer dogs or special software technologies. Chemicals and nukes do not appear until the very end. Special-effects are involved only to the extent that deceit is such an effect.

Imagine that a determined enemy, whose religion commands our destruction, realizes that we are weak but not yet ready to be overwhelmed militarily. They decide to go about our conquest in a very imaginative way (did they employ Sci-Fi writers?). They divide themselves into several apparently competing groups. All groups work to defeat us, employing force, infiltration and deception, but each group works independently and uses its own methods.

Iran builds a world class military and nuclear weapons. Hezbollah seeds militias with global reach. Al Qaeda provides the personal terror, engaging in random killings in different spots around the world. Groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA) disguised as civil right activists work to weaken us from within.

Saudi Arabia, the wealthiest and most dangerous, invests $65 billion to build hundreds of sleeper cells in our country. The cells are called mosques and operate as religious centers. By this deception they prevent our law enforcement agencies from shutting them down. Disguised as pious members of a religion they operate freely. They even recruit converts from the weak amongst us. They befriend our gullible President, subvert our political classes with lucrative consulting jobs and seduce our business elites with big contracts. Working with CAIR and MSA they infiltrate the Homeland Security Department and the FBI. They arrange for Islamic indoctrination of the Department’s agents.

Finally, in a clever diversion, they convince the leadership of the Department to hire Sci-Fi writers who recommend looking for poison gas in cell phones rather than Islamists in mosques. Scary, eh?

We will arrange for a courier to pick up the $10 million check.

Thank you.