"Pizza as a War Signal? It Might Just Be Me Ordering to Confuse Everyone"...Joke by U.S. Defense Secretary

Mention of the "pizza index" amid U.S.-Iran tensions

As tensions rise between the United States and Iran, U.S. Secretary of Defense (Secretary of War) Pete Hegseth has mentioned the so-called "pizza index." This index is a hypothesis that interprets a surge in pizza orders near the U.S. Department of Defense (the Pentagon) as a signal of impending military operations.

According to The Hill, a U.S. political news outlet, on the 23rd (local time), Secretary Hegseth was asked in a Fox News interview the previous day about an X (formerly Twitter) account called "Pentagon Pizza Report," which tracks activity at pizza shops near the Pentagon, and he replied that he was aware of the account.

An AI-generated image of a pizza delivery person.

Secretary Hegseth joked, "I have thought about ordering a massive amount of pizza on some random night just to throw everybody off." He then added, "If you see a lot of Domino's Pizza orders on some Friday night, that could just be me ordering through the app to confuse everybody and throw off the entire system."

The "Pentagon Pizza Report" account tracks Google Maps "popular times" data for pizza shops near the Pentagon and major military facilities. If activity suddenly spikes in the evening or late at night, it is taken as a sign that senior officials are working later than usual. Because there are no pizza restaurants inside the Department of Defense building, staff must order from outside. As crises such as war intensify, employees in the building work longer hours, leading to more pizza orders, which has made this an informal indicator of political and military tension.

Hegseth Pete, U.S. Secretary of War (Department of Defense), is answering reporters' questions at a joint press conference held after concluding the 57th Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) at the Ministry of National Defense building in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, on the afternoon of November 4 last year. Photo by Joint Press Corps

The account reported that around 7 p.m. on June 12 last year, several hours before news broke that Israel had launched a large-scale attack on Iran, Google Maps activity surged at four pizza shops near the Pentagon. This was interpreted as a signal that the military leadership was staying in place to monitor the situation.

The United States stated that it was not involved in the initial strikes on Iran, but later, on June 22, it launched Operation "Midnight Hammer," bombing three of Iran's nuclear facilities and engaging in armed conflict for 12 days.

In the interview, Secretary Hegseth stressed that authorities are fully aware of publicly available information such as pizza order volumes. He said, "There is a reason Midnight Hammer was successful," adding, "We understand open-source information, and we understand the ways the public and others try to watch movements. We control a lot of that in sensitive ways."