Defense Secretary Hegseth says he’ll order random pizzas to throw off monitoring app
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth jokingly said any surge in takeout deliveries to the Pentagon — a phenomenon that has accurately predicted the start of major geopolitical events — could be him ordering pizza “just to throw everybody off.”
Asked about the “Pentagon Pizza Report,” an account on the social platform X that tracks activity at local pizza joints near the U.S. military hub, Hegseth said he was aware of the account.
“I’ve thought of just ordering lots of pizza on random nights just to throw everybody off,” he said Sunday on Fox News. “Some Friday night when you see a bunch of Dominos orders, it might just be me on an app, throwing the whole system off so we keep everybody off balance. We look at every indicator.”
The Pentagon Pizza Report tracks “popular times” data on Google Maps for pizzerias near the Pentagon and other major military installations under the idea that sudden surges in evening or late-night activity suggest high-level officials are working later than usual — an indication of potential or current military action around the world.
Hours before news broke on Israel’s major attack on Iran on June 12, for example, Pentagon Pizza Report noted a surge in Google Maps activity from four pizza places near the Pentagon around 7 p.m. — a signal military leaders were staying in place to monitor unfolding events.
“As of 6:59 p.m. ET nearly all pizza establishments nearby the Pentagon have experienced a HUGE surge in activity,” according to a post on X by the account.
The U.S. has said it was not involved in those initial attacks against Iran but later participated in the 12-day war when it bombed three of Tehran’s nuclear facilities on June 22, an operation known as Midnight Hammer.
Hegseth on Sunday insisted defense officials are well aware of such open-sourced information.
“There’s a reason Midnight Hammer worked, because we understood open sourced, we understand classified ways in which the public and others are trying to watch movements and in sensitive ways, we control for a lot that,” he said.
Created in August 2024, the Pentagon Pizza Report account is not the first means through which the public has tracked pizza deliveries in relation to military activity, an observation that has taken place since the 1980s.
“The news media doesn’t always know when something big is going to happen because they’re in bed, but our [pizza] deliverers are out there at 2 in the morning,” Frank Meeks, an owner of 43 Domino’s outlets in the Washington area, told the Los Angeles Times in January 1991.
He pointed out that on the night of Aug. 1, 1990, the CIA ordered 21 pizzas — a one-night record at the time — hours before Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait and started the Gulf War.
