(FINANCIAL TIMES) - Admiral John Aquilino, the top US military commander in the Indo-Pacific, recently held an unusual meeting with the head of US Space Command and deputy head of US Cyber Command - in a remote part of the Australian outback.

Adm Aquilino and his colleagues, General James Dickinson and Lieutenant-General Charles Moore, had flown all the way to Alice Springs, a dusty town in central Australia, for sensitive talks on China with top Australian officials at Pine Gap, a spy satellite facility run by the CIA and the Australian government.