507 Olivier Urrutia The role of Think Tanks in the definition and application of defence policies and strategies with military shading. The expression think tank already existed at the end of the 19th century in English, however its meaning as an organisation dedicated to reflection is dated at 1959, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The meaning really spread as of the period of the Second World War with the development of military and strategic planning organisations, with the Rand Corporation as the flagship.5 The original meaning of tank was that of a container, until it was extended to mean a combat vehicle, a silo (missile launcher), or a nuclear warhead. So the origin of the term think tank referring to organisations dedicated to reflection, research and promotion of proposals and solutions for public policies can be found in the military field. During the Second World War the term war room was used as a clear reference to issues linked to security and defence: a closed and protected space where civilian and military experts would meet to draw up strategies and find solutions to issues of defence and security or of international relations. There was then a semantic derivation of war room to the meaning of intelligence reserves. Likewise, all of the organisational semantics have a clear American basis and imitate military vocabulary, underlining the existing organic ties. The director of the structure is the strategist or the Chief Officer, the head office the Headquarters, the organisational chart the Organization and Divisions, the research departments the Research Unit Management. The context itself in which think tanks function has a military undertone – this context being defined as the war of ideas. Here, the intellectual space is the battle field. The traditional tools of think tanks – social networks, media, publi-cations, events – could be defined by analogy as their weapons. Thus, initially the military tropism, and subsequently the political tropism, of think tank vocabulary can be explained through successive historical contexts. We feel that the agreed translation in Spanish of war of ideas (laboratorio de ideas – laboratory of ideas) falls short and is misleading as regards the overall activities of think tanks, and “betrays” their essence: it is not just a case of experimenting and researching, but also of creating an efficient tool based on the strategy available to political decision-makers. Think tanks are organised around two interrelated axes: investigation/reflection on the one hand, and influence/impact on the other. Think tank terminology expanded to research centres on public policies due to the similarities between their modus operandi and those of military planning institutes. Information versus Knowledge Think tanks are a leading strategic tool for the management of knowledge. In a globalised framework characterised by new information and communication tech-nologies (NICT), there is an overload of damaging information that can lead to an incorrect understanding of events and subsequent treatment by political, economic 5 MEDVETZ, Thomas, Think tanks in America, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012, p.70-75
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