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PARIS — The French army is creating a “Red Team” of science fiction writers to help military strategists anticipate future threats to national security.

A report by France’s recently established Defence Innovation Agency says four or five visionaries are being hired to imagine “scenarios of disruption” that might not occur to military planners.

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The possible sequences of events they come up with will remain top secret as they could be crucial in the fight against “malicious elements,” the report says.

Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of France’s Foundation for Strategic Research, said the role of the team would be to think more creatively than the military top brass and challenge “any certainties that we may have and hypothesize about the future outside the usual bureaucratic procedures.”

They will try to anticipate how terrorist groups or hostile states might use advanced technology against France.