While I’m not surprised with the findings. From a quick search:
The Pentagon features over 30 distinct food service locations, including more than 20-24 various restaurants, fast-food chains, and cafes catering to its 23,000+ employees. The facility includes three main food courts—most notably the 875-seat Concourse Food Court—along with numerous individual kiosks, branded vendors (e.g., Starbucks, Subway, Taco Bell, Popeyes), and the Center Court Café.
When asking specifically about delivery:
Food orders can be delivered to the Pentagon, but not directly to offices; they must be screened at a remote facility or picked up by personnel at designated secure areas like the Pentagon Metro. Perishable items are generally prohibited from being delivered directly to the building, but staff frequently order from local spots during long shifts.
Key details regarding food deliveries to the Pentagon:
Delivery Procedures: All items must go through the Pentagon Remote Delivery Facility, where they are screened and inspected.
Pickup Location: Employees often meet delivery drivers at secure, accessible points outside the main building, such as the Metro.
Internal Options: The Pentagon contains its own food court with options like McDonald’s, Five Guys, Starbucks, and Subway, which are accessible to employees.
“Pentagon Pizza Theory”: Sudden surges in local, late-night pizza orders to the Pentagon have historically been noted as a potential, unofficial indicator of increased, high-stakes military activity.
But you do have the mention of the theory you’re debunking.
Seems like outside delivery is really complicated and time consuming (though I don’t know if the internal food halls can deliver to office door but seem like it might still be much quicker than leaving the building to meet the delivery person). Plus, a lot more than pizza can be delivered these days (but perhaps the “Pizza” in the name should not be taken literally).
As a side note, years pass when I working in the Intelligence field, when I first started reading some of the CIA’s classified documents and studies I was surprised by just how much of the source information was from general, publicly available and unclassified information.
I heard similar story to that of the Alchian story many years back. Ph.D. candidates dissertation was about the risks to the power grid (for get if it was just electric or if other distribution networks were considered) which pointed out a number of ways an adversary could disrupt and disable the gird. If got published as is usual and then got noticed, classified and perhaps is no longer even searchable in the dissertation archives (if so it’s highly redacted I suspect).
I would lump such cases into the bucket of info hazards.
I like two stories of how the US intelligence located both uranium enrichment plants in operation in mid-1950s USSR: one near Tomsk they identified in 1956 by verifying rumors from a German tailor with an isotopic analysis of uranium traces on a fur hat, the other one near Sverdlovsk in 1958 by an analysis of a photo from an electricity dispatching office published in a Soviet magazine! OSINT at its finest in the latter case
While I’m not surprised with the findings. From a quick search:
When asking specifically about delivery:
But you do have the mention of the theory you’re debunking.
Seems like outside delivery is really complicated and time consuming (though I don’t know if the internal food halls can deliver to office door but seem like it might still be much quicker than leaving the building to meet the delivery person). Plus, a lot more than pizza can be delivered these days (but perhaps the “Pizza” in the name should not be taken literally).
As a side note, years pass when I working in the Intelligence field, when I first started reading some of the CIA’s classified documents and studies I was surprised by just how much of the source information was from general, publicly available and unclassified information.
I heard similar story to that of the Alchian story many years back. Ph.D. candidates dissertation was about the risks to the power grid (for get if it was just electric or if other distribution networks were considered) which pointed out a number of ways an adversary could disrupt and disable the gird. If got published as is usual and then got noticed, classified and perhaps is no longer even searchable in the dissertation archives (if so it’s highly redacted I suspect).
I would lump such cases into the bucket of info hazards.
I like two stories of how the US intelligence located both uranium enrichment plants in operation in mid-1950s USSR: one near Tomsk they identified in 1956 by verifying rumors from a German tailor with an isotopic analysis of uranium traces on a fur hat, the other one near Sverdlovsk in 1958 by an analysis of a photo from an electricity dispatching office published in a Soviet magazine! OSINT at its finest in the latter case