One of the Pentagon’s most senior military officers for Africa provided the clearest indication so far as to why the United States is becoming increasingly anxious over the purported Chinese ambition to build a military outpost somewhere along Africa’s Atlantic coast, most likely in Equatorial Guinea.

In a recorded, on-the-record press briefing held on Friday, Rear Admiral Jamie Sands, head of the Navy’s Special Operations Command in Africa, told reporters from AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany that West Africa’s relative proximity to the United States East Coast is why they’re especially worried about the prospect of a Chinese military outpost in a country along the Atlantic ocean: