What is the Pentagon Pizza theory?
What if ordering a pizza near the Pentagon heralded geopolitical doom?
That's the core of the persistent Pentagon Pizza theory – or 'Pentagon Pizza Meter'.
Made popular by the website The Takeout, this far-fetched but enticing thesis is making a comeback after going viral last year.
The theory?
If the teams at the Pentagon or the Department of Defense are particularly busy, they can't leave their desks. Therefore, it must mean that serious things are afoot. Regardless, the teams need sustenance, so they'll end up ordering food. And what could be quicker than a pizza?
Ergo: If pizza deliveries go up in Washinton D.C., it could signal an imminent crisis.
This all goes back to the Cold War.
At the time, Soviet intelligence services monitored excessive pizza deliveries by couriers to gauge alertness to potential crises.
Then, on 1 August 1990, Frank Meeks, a well-established Domino's franchisee in Washington, noticed a sudden surge in deliveries to CIA buildings... all on the eve of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, which kicked off the Gulf War.
What he thought was a coincidence at the time has become a pattern over the years.
Meeks told the Los Angeles Times that a similar surge in pizza deliveries happened in December 1998 during the impeachment hearings of former President Bill Clinton.
In the age of social media, the theory has led online sleuths to scan the area around the Pentagon for pizza order spikes.
And wouldn't you know it, on 13 April 2024, there were unusually high pizza orders from not only the Pentagon but also the White House and the Department of Defense.
That date marked Iran launching drones into Israeli territory.
The theory quickly became a meme, with X users posting screenshots from Google Maps showing real-time activity at pizza outlets - particularly at a Papa John's in Washington D.C.
On X, the @PenPizzaReport account has set itself the daunting task of monitoring the activity of pizzerias near the Pentagon in real time.
And this week, on 1 June 2025, the account published: 'With less than an hour to go before closing time, the Domino's closest to the Pentagon is experiencing unusually high footfall.'
A few hours later, tensions escalated between Israel and Iran.
So, can pizzas predict war or be used to assess US involvement in global crises?
It's hardly a reliable geopolitical indictor and no definitive correlation has been established. However, it remains a tasty predictor if so.
As CNN's then-Pentagon correspondent Wolf Blitzer reported in 1990: 'Bottom line for journalists: Always monitor the pizzas.'
A joke, maybe. But maybe the Pentagon needs to diversify their food orders...
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