If China invades Taiwan, GPUs will be the least of our concerns.
>> which appears increasingly likely
It's not likely. China gains from the sabre rattling and politicking. They've seen what happens when a bully country attacks a smaller country.
The leaders of the CCP have everything they could possibly want in this world. They won't risk it all for an uncertain outcome attacking Taiwan.
China's military has been built with the explicit long term goal of invading Taiwan. They drill for it, with pretty provocative displays - e.g. flying ballistic missiles over the island last year.
I think they will continue to build their military until success is assured, winning the battle before it's fought, per Sun Tzu. That's the best way to fight: make resistance obviously pointless.
Russia, to take a different example, never had enough troops to occupy Ukraine. They had ~130k troops on the borders. Per [1], crushing the Czechoslovakia 1968 uprising and maintaining order afterwards required 500k troops for 14 million people, and that was without state military resistance. Ukraine had 3x that, Russia would have needed an army on the order of 1.5 million. So the plan was to fly in and take Kyiv in a decapitation attack, but it failed, and here we are.
China has an army of 2 million people actively serving. Taiwan is 23 million people. I think it's a matter of when, not if, as long as Xi is in the ascendant, and isn't too distracted by the growing problems of the lopsided debt-laden, export-focused, manufacturer subsidizing mercantilist Chinese economy.
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/03/russia-couldnt-occupy-u...
How many are assigned to area around Taiwan?
But also, the number is kinda pointless as they need to get to Taiwan somehow unless they want to swim across.
Clearly the incentives and motivations of people running oppressive regimes are slightly different.
They don't have Taiwan. Historically, they think Taiwan is not a distinct country, but a splinter off of China that needs to be brought back into the fold again.
Just the same bullshit Putin thinks about Ukraine (and most probably also about Belarus). The only thing saving Taiwan from a Chinese invasion is just how bloody Putin's nose got in Ukraine - and that's without the defense pact Taiwan has with the US.
The official reasons given differ but generally are just an excuse to drive the nationalism which is the goal of the war in the first place. China's government seems to be doing well enough right now to not need that trump card.
While I agree that the Iraq war was completely out of any legal boundaries (unlike Afghanistan), it had never been the intention of the US to pull a land-grab war and turn Iraq into the 51st US state. The invasions of Putin however clearly were, and so will a potential Chinese invasion into Taiwan assuming they'll stick to their actions in Hongkong.