A cloud of 3D-printed drones big enough to bring down the latest U.S. stealth fighter, the F35, was just one of the combat scenarios evoked in a discussion of the future of warfare at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday. Much of the discussion focused on the changes computers are bringing to the battlefield, including artificial intelligence and autonomous systems -- but also the way the battlefield is coming to computing, with cyberwar, and social media psyops an ever more real prospect. Former U.S. Navy fighter pilot Mary Cummings, now director of the Humans and Autonomy Lab at Duke University, delivered the first strike. "The barrier to entry to drone technology is so low that everyone can have one, and if the Chinese go out and print a million copies of a drone, a very small drone, and put those up against an F35 and they go into the engine, you basically obviate what is a very expensive platform," she said. Drones could not only defeat the F35, on which the U.S. is spending what Cummins called "a ridiculous amount of money," but also replace them, she said.

The CIA has revealed details of its "Project Star Gate" mission to develop psychic abilities for the first time. The revelations come as part of a huge dump of documents – almost 12 million in all – that are being made available on the internet. And they show the organisation's plans to harness the supernatural in ways that have never been seen before. Project Star Gate, as it was known, was the codename for a US government project intended to use psychic and supernatural phenomenon for spying and military uses. In one of the pages, it lays out why the government wants to use it – the benefits include the fact that it is "passive", "inexpensive" and that there is "no known defense". The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

'Tis the season for the public relations exercise known as "here's what we think (or hope) will happen in the tech sector next year," flooding my inbox with predictions for 2017. No one knows what will happen tomorrow, let alone over the next 12 months, but the exercise yields interesting insights into what's hot (and what's not) in technology today. Artificial intelligence (and machine/deep learning) is the hottest trend, eclipsing, but building on, the accumulated hype for the previous "new big thing," big data. The new catalyst for the data explosion is the Internet of Things, bringing with it new cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The rapid fluctuations in the relative temperature of these trends also create new dislocations and opportunities in the tech job market.

With the growth of artificial intelligence, the fears of many have started to become a reality as jobs start falling to the machines. Many technologists and government officials will see the emergence of the digital era as a chance to score political points through job creation, however one has to ask whether the scale of the challenge is appreciated. For Dik Vos, CEO at SQS, the rapid evolution to the connected economy could see as many as 30% of the population being made redundant and in need to retraining. "The real impact will be seen in five to seven years but already in 2017 there will be greater disruption to the community and more jobs taken over by software," said Vos in an interview with Telecoms.com. "There will be a huge group of people who will be caught out when the rate of development goes much faster than we anticipated."

The US Army has demonstrated the capabilities of a'hoverbike' that could one day deliver supplies to soldiers in war zones. Hailed the'Amazon on the battlefield', the joint tactical aerial resupply vehicle (JTARV) has been in the development stages since 2014 and proved itself to be a working prototype earlier this month. Researchers are also working on technology that will help JTARV fly low to the ground at speeds of 60 miles per hour while delivering supplies within 30 minutes. The US Army has demonstrated the capabilities of a'hoverbike' that could one day deliver supplies to soldiers in war zones. Hailed the'Amazon on the battlefield, the joint tactical aerial resupply vehicle (JTARV) has been in the development stages since 2014 Since 2014, the US Army has been working with developers to create itts'hoverbike' - a unique rectangular-shaped quadcopter.

The US army wants a missile that could shoot a swarm of weaponised drones over a target area. The idea would be to equip existing missiles with the ability to dispense multiple "smart quadcopters" after launch. On release, the quadcopters would unfold, decelerate and fly off under their own power to attack different locations. A single missile could therefore knock out multiple targets. The drone-firing weapon is outlined in a solicitation for design proposals from the Department of Defense.

Julian Assange will not hand himself in despite a promise to do so if Chelsea Manning was granted clemency, according to one of his lawyers. WikiLeaks had pledged in a tweet that its founder would agree to be extradited to the US if Barack Obama granted clemency to Ms Manning, which he did in the final hours of his presidency. Mr Assange's lawyers initially seemed to suggest that promise would be carried through – telling reporters that he stood by his earlier comments – but it appears now that Mr Assange will stay inside the embassy. The commitment to accept extradition to the US was based on Ms Manning being released immediately, Mr Assange's lawyer told The Hill. Ms Manning won't actually be released until May – to allow for a standard 120-day transition period, which gives people time to prepare and find somewhere to live, an official told The New York Times for its original report about Ms Manning's clemency.

At the Detroit Auto Show last week, Volkswagen hoped to escape the present with a nod to the past, introducing a revamped version of its iconic flat-faced, boxy Microbus, the vehicle that shepherded the counterculture across the interstates some five decades ago. The bus's reincarnation is a battery-propelled, self-driving vehicle called ID Buzz. But nostalgic wing-vent windows and chrome trim could not distract from the company's current predicament. Barely had the auto show kicked off when the Justice Department announced that VW had pleaded guilty to criminal and civil charges related to its efforts to cheat on U.S. emissions standards. The company agreed to pay $4.3 billion in penalties, the largest fine ever levied by the U.S. government on an auto company, dwarfing both Toyota's $1.2-billion settlement for vehicle-safety problems involving unintended acceleration and GM's nine-hundred-million-dollar settlement for ignition-switch defects.

Although few details about Fanny's activism have survived, her advocacy was part of a larger, well-documented animal protection movement, which emerged in England at the tail end of the 18th century. By the second half of the 19th century, activists had set their sights on vivisection, speaking out about what they saw as barbaric laboratory practices. These activists, who were primarily women, formed anti-vivisection societies, made their case in articles and public lectures, disrupted demonstrations by prominent vivisectors, and lobbied for legislation to restrict or ban the practice.

The CIA is putting its secret history online, uploading millions of newly declassified documents. The documents include previously unseen information about the agency's hunt for UFOs and its work on the "Star Gate" project, which tried to teach humans to become psychic and see through walls. One document, for instance, describes that project in detail. It shows how the CIA recruited volunteers to go through a programme of training that would let people access information without any of the usual means, and which would be used as a weapon for which there is "no known defense". The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.