Time to stock up on electronics (& everything else made in Taiwan or China)? Using the guise of a military exercise does seem like a logical way for the war to start (whether it's this time or at some point in the future) & fits with CCP's general strategy of incremental accumulation.

You'd imagine the next step would be to manufacture an 'incident' - something that justifies a further escalation - & so on. This may be a war that begins before anybody really knows it's happening. I suspect they'll delay the 'shooting' part as long as possible - as you've mentioned before, an enormous amount of havoc can be wreaked purely through a blockade, & it gives other countries an excuse to look the other way if no-one is being killed.