How the Pentagon Pizza Index Predicts Global War
- Kevin Lankes
- Jun 23
- 4 min read
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-LjVnxdoun8
Israel just launched a major attack against Iran, and we got a ding on the Pizza Index. What do you guys want on your pizza? You guys like hellfire missiles? Well, the Pentagon certainly likes those mixed in with their pizza. I think they’re extra spicy for anyone who likes jalapenos on theirs. But be careful, they clear out rooms pretty well, I hear.
Long story short, in 1991, a Domino’s Pizza guy named Frank Meeks made the rounds on various news outlets to talk about the fact that sales went through the roof on a particular date. He ran multiple stores, so this was really easy for him to see. That date was August 1st, 1990, the day Saddam Hussein was solidifying plans to invade Kuwait. When more and more people caught wind of this, they started doing what people do--they dug into it, and looked back through time and noticed a repeating pattern. And according to some reports, the Pizza Index has accurately predicted 21 global conflicts since the early 1980s. The list includes the invasion of Kuwait, as well as U.S. military operations in Panama and Grenada, and all the way up until last year in April of 2024 when Iran attacked Israel and the Golan Heights with the largest drone strike in history.
So what is the Pizza Index? The premise is simple: when a major event is about to happen, the staff at the Pentagon is going to be working late, possibly around the clock. And the best way to feed a lot of hungry people putting in a lot of hours is ordering pizza. It’s fast, cost-effective, and calorie-rich, and it’s easy to eat while multitasking. That’s why, even though there are lots of fast food places inside the Pentagon complex itself, we still see pizza orders spike during big news events, because pizza is just easier when it comes to big group orders.
And this is not actually new. The Pizza Index, or Pizza Meter, dates back at least to the Cold War. Soviet intelligence had this figured out way back then. They even had a word for it, which is probably where the term Pizza Index originally came from, and that word was Pizzint, which translates to “pizza intelligence. Soviet agents noticed that big food orders from takeout places would spike just before the U.S. launched some kind of military operation. So they monitored the areas surrounding American government facilities, and watched to see when big food orders went down, because that was a possible indication that something more sinister was also about to go down, too. It wasn’t a guarantee, but they used that information together with other intelligence that maybe pointed toward a specific scenario in order to gear up for whatever might be about to happen.
This is just one example of how regular data is used in intelligence gathering to puzzle out complex pictures of what global adversaries might be planning. The first time the U.S. intelligence community figured this out was just before World War II when the Office of Strategic Services was developed, which was a precursor of the CIA. I talk about that a bit in the video I did about the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a declassified guide for resisting tyranny for everyday people using everyday tools and systems.
It’s actually insanely easy to gather this kind of data yourself. I wouldn’t recommend it, because again, there’s no real way to know why people make big food orders. Impending global destabalizing conflict is just one possibility. They could also be having a birthday party, or I don’t know, watching Full Metal Jacket for the 500th time that month. There’s just no way to know. But in order to see the delivery activity at a particular restaurant, you can just load up Google Maps and it’ll show you in real-time how busy they are. Any spikes in delivery you see, well, check the news later and see whether or not the Iranian top brass just all exploded. Congratulations, you’re an intelligence officer.
Nowadays, state-run intelligence operations have a ton of tools to work with, and I’m sure they’re able to monitor things like fast food orders with astounding ease. They’re probably even watching the delivery happen live with all their spy satellites. And since trump leaked the resolution of U.S. spy satellites during his first term, he just shared a classified image right on social media, we know that those things can see everything. Foreign powers are watching those deliveries and finding out the delivery guy has something on his neck that maybe he should get checked out. But they also analyze other data points, too, because just one indicator isn’t enough to be sure. They check out things like Uber and Lyft data and electricity use around areas of government activity.
At some point, if not already, intelligence agencies will put together early warning systems that use predictive AI technology to scan the wealth of data and figure out when something concerning is about to happen. Rest assured that one of those indicators will be the Pizza Index.
Don’t forget to like and subscribe and check out my other videos about big social issues, political happenings, and historical human-caused disasters. Make sure to comment if you want to get in on the discussion, and stick around to see whatever other bizarre system of human invention we cover here next. And remember, while you’re out there in the world, let’s do some f*cking good in whatever way you personally can in your own little corner of influence, you pizalicious intelligence operative, you.
I’ll see you in the next one.
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