The Hsinchu Science Park, on Taiwan’s west coast, is lush and green, with streets neatly planned and clearly signposted. The buildings are modern and well maintained – from the outside most visitors wouldn’t even know that they are among the world’s most important factories. Hsinchu used to be famous for its fishball street snacks, but now it’s referred to as Taiwan’s Silicon Valley, a tech-focused microcosm pipelining workers from school to university and into the world-leading semiconductor industry that is crucial to global supply chains. The chips, or semiconductors, are the tiny pieces of tech that power just about everything,...