Five Best Ideas of the Day: July 15

1. With the $3 billion annual cost of fighting piracy at sea, we could invest in economic and infrastructure development on the Somali coast to take down piracy’s root causes.

By Anja Shortland and Federico Varese in The Conversation

2. Simply by letting students understand their financial aid picture earlier, we can improve college access and post-secondary options for low-income students.

By Fawn Johnson in National Journal

3. The story of ISIS, which has seemed to be all about religion and military developments, is actually mostly about politics: access to government revenue and services, a say in decision-making, and a modicum of social justice.

By Jessica Tuchman Mathews in the New York Review of Books

4. Giving a supercomputer “life after retirement” means investing in the future of technology in Africa.

By Jorge Salazar at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, UT-Austin

5. Europe has a role – and a responsibility – to stay engaged as the U.S. ‘rebalances’ toward China.

By Joseph S. Nye in Project Syndicate

The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C.