It's been a while since I've tooled around with the Awakening scenario, but if I recall the details you are in the center of a fairly large quadrant surrounded by hostile aliens on all sides. You might be able to delay the intel attacks somewhat by not expanding too far and limiting the amount of races you contact. In a typical SE4 game you would try to capture as much territory as possible, sending your colony ships past empty worlds to try and gain a foothold in as many systems as you can. Here you might be wiser to not travel beyond a system until you've cololnized all the planets, and try to limit the number of directions you expand in. Perhaps by being more compact, and only facing a couple of enemies at a time you can overcome the intel attacks.
Of course eventually they will come and find you so if this works at all, it will only work for so long.
