Amid the U.S. attack on Iran, orders for pizza restaurants near the U.S. Department of Defense have increased significantly around the time of the airstrike. Analysts say that the “Pentagon Pizza Index,” an informal indicator that can predict the movement of the U.S. Department of Defense, has hit the mark again this time.
According to the “Pentagon Pizza Report” on the 2nd, pizza orders surged at 1:28 a.m. on the 28th of last month at “Pitato Pizza,” the closest pizza restaurant to the Pentagon building (Pentagon) in Arlington, Virginia. Pizza orders flocked in the middle of the night, which coincided with the time of the U.S. airstrike on Iran.
Since then, more pizza orders have poured into the store than usual at 9:42 p.m. on the 1st. The X account utilizes Google Maps’ “popular time zone” function to track whether pizza stores around the Pentagon are more crowded than usual.
The Pentagon Pizza Index is an unofficial indicator of the correlation between large-scale U.S. military operations and orders from pizza restaurants near the Pentagon. It started with the idea that if defense officials order pizza in large quantities when they work overtime, a military operation may be imminent or in progress. Since the Cold War era, there has been a significant correlation between pizza orders and military operations near the Pentagon. Even before Israel launched a large-scale airstrike against Iran on June 12 last year, the index of the “Pentagon Pizza Report” X account was reported to have hit the mark.
“I know,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News when asked about the X account. “If you see a surge in Domino’s Pizza orders one Friday night, that’s what I ordered with the app to shake the system up and confuse everyone,” he joked.
SAM KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
