Absolutely. Easy save: put a team to find out why colonies are going dark, then figure out, "Hey, they're followed warp patterns!" and then just send a bunch of ships to juicier planets, such as the EA's or someone else. 

You can only really distract them right now. Sometime later, if no one finds out the supah-easeh effective attack against the Seeder ships, then I'll go ahead and say it some some IC-scientist will be "I'VE GOT IT!"