Chris Miller

At the centre of the world’s tech sector sits a Taiwanese chip tycoon most people have never heard of. Morris Chang is the founder of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s biggest chipmaker. He became rich and powerful by making chips the rest of the world can’t live without. And as the world’s semiconductor industry is being reshaped by Chinese and US efforts to control the future of chip technology, Chang finds himself courted by the world’s most powerful governments but also under pressure amid an escalating geopolitical clash. The tale of Morris Chang is not only a story of visionary entrepreneurialism and technical brilliance Though TSMC is far from a household name, almost everyone uses its chips each day.

The frustrating thing about tagging, or electronic monitoring (EM) is that it could so easily be effective — if only we did it properly. As a former police officer, I can vouch that Theodore Dalrymple is right when he says that it’s a relatively small number of prolific offenders who commit the majority of recorded crime. So if we used the right technology — if these criminals knew that any repeat offence would be almost certain to result in detection and punishment — then reoffending rates would fall. But although there’s a lot of potential in EM, I’m afraid the potential has been unrealised in this country. Ever since 1989, when we first started deploying EM as an alternative to prison and an aid to rehabilitation, we’ve got it wrong.