I went and saw Greg Bear speak a month or two ago. He spoke about his advisor role at Homeland Security. I think it's a pretty great idea to have a group of able-minded science fiction writers thinking through possible disaster scenarios and how we can avert or at least respond to them.

Quoted: Looking to prevent the next terrorist attack, the Homeland Security Department is tapping into the wild imaginations of a group of self-described deviant thinkers: science-fiction writers.