Can Pizza Orders Predict Military Action? One Man Keeps Track.

If foreign adversaries want to predict when and where the United States will launch a military campaign, they might rely on satellite imagery, intercepted communications or AI analysis. But if garden-variety subreddit conspiracy theorists want to gain such insights before news breaks, they might just follow the pizza.

Run by an anonymous software engineer, the social media account Pentagon Pizza Report tracks Google data for pizzerias around the military complex in Arlington. (The anonymous Google Maps data is aggregated from “timeline” or “location history” on phones, including visits made to establishments.) Often posting multiple times a day on X, PPR frequently singles out spikes in pizzeria activity, allowing its 200,000-plus followers to draw conclusions about what might be happening at the Pentagon. Mostly, it seems, these posts suggest little more than a busy (or slow) night at a pizzeria.