An Unusual Clue to Trouble: The Pentagon Pizza Tracker
By Ward Clark | June 14, 2025
The nation's intelligence services, the military, and the various levels of government are always (or at least, they should be) on the lookout for signs of trouble. Those of us in the news and commentary business are likewise. The government, of course, has resources we can't begin to approach - satellites, high-flying aircraft, talented hackers, confidential informants, and so on.
As it happens, though, there may be one way to see geopolitical trouble on the horizon that may come as a surprise, and best of all, it's viewable by anyone. This prognostication method involves pizza.
Yes, really.
An X account created to track the busyness of pizza shops could have predicted a major international event.
The Pentagon Pizza Report tracks the real-time foot traffic at pizza spots near the Pentagon, hinting at officials working late at the government building, which may suggest potential conflict.
Hours before Israel launched “Operation Rising Lion,” the account posted the activity of four pizza shops, captioning the post, “Most pizza establishments near the Pentagon are currently experiencing average traffic as of about 3:05pm ET.”
The strikes took place late Thursday evening as the Pentagon Pizza Report monitored pizza shops in the Arlington, Virginia, area.
The account continued posting updates about the closest and second-closest Domino’s to the Pentagon leading up to and following the airstrikes.
A post at 8:57 p.m. reported that the location had “surged in traffic.”
Whoever came up with this idea knows how to take their brain out of neutral and start running it up through the gears. There's an inarguable logic to this; when a crisis is brewing, people in places like the Pentagon are burning that midnight oil, and they're getting hungry. They can't go home, so they order in, because, after all, people knead to eat. I've never sausage a good idea for detecting upcoming trouble.
Do you have to have a security clearance to deliver to the Pentagon? Or do buyers just meet the delivery people in the lobby?
One wonders how many unfriendly sorts may be watching this as well. It appears to have originated simply as a way to see which pizza joints were busy and which were not, but now?
“Open-source tracking of pizza spot activity around the Pentagon (and other places),” the X account’s official description reads. “Frequent-ish updates on where the lines are long.”
This is a real pizza work. What's more, it's an interesting side slice to our national intelligence-gathering process.
https://redstate.com/wardclark/2025/06/14/an-unusual-clue-to-trouble-the-pentagon-pizza-tracker-n2190494
