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• Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in July, accusing the AI lab of stealing trade secrets.
• OpenAI has denied wrongdoing. On Monday, the AI firm published a blog post saying the suit was “careless.”
• Several voices across tech weighed in on the heavyweight back-and-forth.

OpenAI is clapping back against Apple’s lawsuit.

On Monday, the AI company published a blog post titled “Apple is getting this wrong,” accusing the iPhone maker of presenting a misleading account of the events behind its trade-secret lawsuit. OpenAI highlighted what it said were errors in Apple’s legal correspondence and released messages that it said provided important context about the dispute.

“Apple is one of the greatest companies of all time, and built a reputation for obsessing over the smallest details,” the post says. “This careless, aggressive and oddly personal lawsuit sadly doesn’t live up to that reputation.”

Apple sued OpenAI in July, alleging that the ChatGPT maker benefited from trade secrets taken by former Apple employees. The lawsuit alleges, among other things, that Chang Liu, a veteran Apple engineer, improperly retained and accessed confidential company information after leaving for the AI lab in January.

OpenAI — which is trying to develop its own hardware products — previously denied wrongdoing, saying it is not interested in Apple’s secrets.

Monday’s post takes the AI lab’s defense a step further. It said that Apple employees reached out to Liu after he left for OpenAI in January and said Apple is “failing to properly manage system access when people leave.”

Here is what smart people are saying about the post:

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX

Apple is seeking expedited discovery and a preliminary injunction, per Monday court filings. That suggests that the company believes other former employees may have retained or accessed confidential information after joining OpenAI.

Elon Musk, the outspoken Tesla and SpaceX CEO who lost a lawsuit against OpenAI and its leaders earlier this year, reposted screenshots of Apple’s latest court filings on Tuesday.

“Can’t trust OpenAI,” he wrote.

Neil Cybart, Founder of Above Avalon

Neil Cybart, the founder of the independent Apple analysis firm Above Avalon, dismissed OpenAI’s response in a post on X.

He described the post as “nonsensical” and accused OpenAI of using the classic “hey, look over there” strategy to draw attention away from Apple’s central allegations.

“OpenAI must be really nervous about Apple’s trade secret theft lawsuit because this silly attempt at PR spin is nonsensical,” Cybart wrote.

Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money”

Jim Cramer, CNBC’s host of “Mad Money,” also commented on Apple’s preliminary injunction in a post on X.

“Gloves off,” he wrote.

Todd Dailey, former Apple enterprise marketing manager

Todd Dailey, a former Apple enterprise marketing manager who spent 22 years at the company according to his LinkedIn, said his own departure made OpenAI’s statements about Apple’s offboarding problems seem plausible.

On X, he wrote that he still had two unreleased Apple prototypes.

“Old Apple wouldn’t have let an ex-employee hold a prototype for more than 24 hours and would have sent someone to my door to get it,” Dailey wrote.

He said the experience reflected how stretched Apple’s employees had become and made it easier to understand how the company’s lawyers could have made mistakes in their correspondence with OpenAI.

“I’m not surprised at all that busy, harried lawyers could make this mistake,” he wrote.

Harpal Singh, founder of Blimpp

Harpal Singh, the founder of the generative-engine-optimization platform Blimpp, told Business Insider that OpenAI’s post was written to directly contradict Apple’s account.

That tactic, he said, could affect how journalists, search engines, and AI tools describe the lawsuit.

“OpenAI is not just defending itself in court,” Singh said. “It wants to present the narrative that journalists, search engines, and other AI Response Systems will mirror.”

• I made Ina Garten’s Greek orzo salad for my Greek parents.
• The salad features feta, orzo, chickpeas, kalamata olives, and red bell pepper.
• My parents loved the light and delicious dish, especially for the summer.

When I saw that Ina Garten had a Greek orzo salad, I knew my Greek parents had to try it.

My parents immigrated to the US from Greece in the 1980s, and they made sure to teach me about Greek culture through food. My dad made his delicious pastitsio (like lasagna, but better) every week, and whipped up avgolemono soup whenever one of us was sick. Every Christmas was celebrated with a big pan of baklava, and youvetsi was a dinner staple.

But my parents are always willing to try something new — they tested 15 different “Greek” products from Trader Joe’s to see which tasted authentic! So, when I told them Garten had a Greek orzo salad, they were super excited.

Ina Garten’s Greek orzo salad is packed with fresh ingredients.

To make Garten’s Greek orzo salad, which serves six, you’ll need:

• 1 cup of orzo (about 8 ounces)
• 1 cup of canned chickpeas, rinsed and drained
• 2 cups of baby arugula
• 4 ounces of Greek feta, ½-inch diced (not crumbled)
• ½ cup of good olive oil
• ½ cup of diced red bell pepper (¼-inch)
• ½ cup of diced red onion (¼-inch)
• ½ cup of kalamata olives, pitted and halved lengthwise
• ¼ cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, plus extra for serving
• 3 tablespoons of capers in brine, drained
• 3 tablespoons of minced fresh dill

Garten’s Greek orzo salad, which appears in her cookbook “Go-To Dinners,” was inspired by Round Swamp Farm, a third-generation family farm in East Hampton.

“Their prepared food and baked goods are simply outstanding,” she writes. “This recipe was inspired by one of their salads; it has all the Greek ingredients that I love — orzo, olives, feta, lemon, and dill.”

The first step to making Garten’s salad is prepping the orzo.

I brought six cups of water to a boil in a large saucepan.

I added the orzo and one tablespoon of salt to my saucepan.

Once you’ve added the orzo, Garten says you should return the water to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for eight to 10 minutes.

You’ll know it’s ready when the orzo is al dente.

While my orzo cooked, I began cutting my veggies.

I diced the red onion and red bell pepper.

I prepped my chickpeas and capers.

I rinsed and drained the chickpeas and made sure to drain my capers.

I also halved my kalamata olives, minced the dill, and diced my feta cheese.

Garten’s Greek orzo salad comes together quickly — the only real work is cutting the herbs and veggies!

It didn’t take long to make the dressing.

I just whisked together the lemon juice and olive oil with two teaspoons of salt and one teaspoon of black pepper, and voilà! It was ready.

Once the orzo was ready, I drained and transferred it to a large bowl.

Now I could build the salad.

First, I poured the vinaigrette over the warm pasta.

I made sure to stir it well so the orzo would absorb all that delicious flavor.

Then I added the onion, bell pepper, and chickpeas.

Everything was already looking so colorful.

I topped it off with the dill, olives, capers, and feta, and mixed everything together.

I used two spoons to carefully combine all the ingredients.

I stirred in the arugula just before serving.

Garten says you can enjoy her salad either warm or at room temperature, but hold off on adding the arugula if you’re making it the day before — no one likes soggy leaves in their salad!

Once you’re ready to serve, add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and taste for seasoning.

I should also note that Garten recommends serving this with sliced lemon. My parents didn’t love the idea of whole lemon pieces in the salad, so we decided to nix them.

Garten’s Greek orzo salad looked fresh and vibrant.

I always love serving a salad full of color, and Garten’s Greek orzo salad has plenty.

The pop of red from the bell pepper, the fresh green from the arugula, and the bright purple from the onion all worked together to make a beautiful plate.

My parents looked impressed as I brought the salad to the dinner table. But would it taste as good as it looked?

Garten’s Greek orzo salad was super delicious — and now my parents can’t stop making it.

The orzo soaks up Mediterranean flavors familiar to any Greek — salty chunks of feta intertwining with the rich kalamata olives, the texture of crisp bell pepper and crunchy red onion dancing together, that pop of fresh lemon brightening every bite. There were so many different components to the salad, but everything was perfectly balanced.

My parents now love whipping up Garten’s Greek orzo salad, and I’m not surprised. The dish tastes like something we would’ve eaten while watching the turquoise waves of the Aegean Sea during our summer trips to Greece.

“Ina must have been Greek in one of her previous lives,” my mom declared.

• The US Air Force’s B-52 bomber upgrades are delayed and over budget by billions of dollars.
• The B-52 Stratofortress has been flying since 1950, and the Air Force hopes to keep it around into the 2050s.
• The modernization plans include new commercial engines and radars.

Cost and scheduling challenges have pushed the US Air Force’s B-52 Stratofortress modernization program billions over budget, according to a new report.

The aging B-52 has long been a workhorse of the Air Force, which is replacing the bomber’s decades-old engines to keep the aircraft flying into the 2050s. But the upgrades have run into delays and rising costs.

Last week, the Government Accountability Office, a government watchdog agency, released a report on the current status of the B-52 modernization and sustainment efforts. Of the 13 upgrades that the bombers are getting, 10 are experiencing cost, schedule, or performance challenges.

The most expensive B-52 upgrade, the Commercial Engine Replacement Program, has seen a roughly $3 billion increase in cost since 2023, with the initial operational date pushed back more than 15 months. The GAO report said that the program “will likely continue to face significant challenges as the Air Force plans to begin production with little to no developmental flight testing.”

The other components being upgraded include new radars, communications systems, training devices, and advanced target pod displays. The B-52s are also being modified to carry the AGM-181 Long-Range Standoff weapon, a new nuclear-armed cruise missile under development.

According to the GAO, there are challenges in the Air Force’s approach, which involves working on many of these upgrades at the same time. “Work on one program may involve moving hardware on the aircraft that relates to work to be completed by other modernization programs,” the report said.

Previous GAO reports have highlighted challenges in the modernization program. In its most recent report, the GAO made six recommendations for the Air Force, including delaying the engine production decision until the program office analyzes recent cost growth and schedule delays to understand risks and benefits.

Despite reported issues with the modernization program, officials have touted the significance of the B-52 modernization program. Last year, Vice. Admiral. Richard Correll, then the Trump administration’s nomination to head US Strategic Command, told Congress the upgrades were “essential” to ensuring the bombers can fulfill their intended role in strategic deterrence. The engine replacements, which will put Rolls-Royce engines inside the B-52s, would, alongside the radar technologies, essentially make the B-52 bomber “a new airplane.”

Earlier this year, the B-52 demonstrated its continued ability to support combat operations by flying overland bombing missions over Iran.

“Over the past 30 days, we’ve struck more than 11,000 targets,” Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in March, one month into the Iran war. “Given the increase in air superiority, we’ve successfully started to conduct the first overland B-52 missions, which allow us to continue to get on top of the enemy.”

Conversations surrounding the modernization of the B-52s come as defense experts and lawmakers sound the alarm about broader problems facing America’s fleet of air assets, which is shrinking and aging at an accelerating pace.

• Flock cameras read license plates and then collect and store the data for investigations.
• Flock cameras can misread plates, leading to wrongful arrests. Critics also raise privacy concerns.
• Police say Flock can help them track vehicles and solve crimes.

Flock cameras are in thousands of communities across the country and often hide in plain sight.

A Flock camera is an automated license plate reader, or ALPR, made by the public-safety technology company Flock Safety.

The cameras are commonly installed along roads, at intersections, near neighborhood entrances, and around businesses or other private properties.

When a vehicle passes, the camera captures an image and uses machine learning to turn its license plate, color, make, model, and other details into searchable information.

That makes them useful for those deploying them, like the police. Law enforcement agencies say Flock’s technology can help them track down vehicles and locate crime suspects. In some cases, officers can search for a specific car across tens of thousands of cameras nationwide.

The technology has also sparked a growing backlash. Dozens of communities have cancelled, paused, or suspended contracts, citing privacy concerns, potential misuse of the cameras, and data sharing with federal immigration officials.

Flock says its license plate readers do not use facial recognition and that customers — meaning the ones putting up the cameras, not the ones being monitored — can control access to and sharing of the data collected.

“They are built to focus on the vehicle involved in an incident and the details that can help distinguish it from other vehicles on the road,” Flock says.

The company says that vehicle records are automatically deleted after 30 days by default, although customers may configure different retention periods when contracts and local laws permit.

Who makes Flock cameras?

Flock cameras are manufactured by Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company that develops surveillance and public-safety technology.

Its CEO, Garrett Langley, founded the company in 2017. In a recent blog post published in May, he wrote:

Nine years ago, I lived in a neighborhood in Atlanta where crime was ticking up. People were breaking into cars and pulling firearms out of glove boxes. Nobody seemed able to do anything about it.

A police major told me something I’ve never forgotten: more than 70 percent of crime involves a vehicle, and most of those crimes go unsolved because police rarely have the license plate.

So I did what engineers do. I built a system to find the plate. A few months later, it worked, and that was the beginning of Flock.

Its customers now include police departments, local governments, businesses, schools, homeowner associations, property operators, and other private organizations.

Flock says that it has deployed some 120,000 cameras across 49 states. In a recent X post, Langley said that during a single day, those cameras alerted authorities to more than 4,000 sex offenders, some 2,100 stolen cars, over 1,600 wanted people, about 160 missing people, and one Amber Alert.

Flock operates as a subscription business, charging annual service fees for each camera. Flock was recently valued at $8.4 billion.

The company also sells conventional video cameras, audio-detection technology, investigative software, and drones.

Why is there controversy around Flock cameras?

Some people are concerned about Flock cameras because the devices can collect information about ordinary drivers who are not suspected of crimes.

Business Insider previously reported that in at least a dozen instances across the country, misreads, or a lack of verification by officers, resulted in innocent people being stopped at gunpoint or detained in jail, among other outcomes. In Toledo, Ohio, driver Brandon Upchurch was mauled by a police dog after a Flock camera misread the “7” on his license plate as a “2.”

In Roseville, California, Flock incorrectly read the plate in 71% of 1,427 stolen-vehicle and felony alerts issued during 2023 and 2024, a Business Insider investigation found.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for civil liberties in the digital world, says Flock cameras constitute mass surveillance because they photograph every passing vehicle rather than only those connected to suspected crimes — like a speed camera might.

Critics say a broad network of cameras can reveal intimate patterns showing when a vehicle visited particular homes, businesses, medical facilities, religious institutions, or political events.

“It has been misused by police to spy on their ex-partners and could be used to target people engaged in First Amendment activities or seeking medical care,” the EFF wrote in a blog post.

The EFF obtained records showing that Texas deputies queried Flock’s network during an investigation involving a woman suspected of self-managing an abortion. The EFF and the ACLU have also reported that local police departments shared or searched Flock data for immigration-enforcement purposes.

Flock says that data sharing can expand the system’s reach by allowing agencies to search records collected outside their jurisdictions.

Are there Flock cameras near me?

Flock does not publish a complete public map showing every camera in its network.

The company says its cameras are used by law enforcement agencies, businesses, homeowner associations, and other private organizations in the United States.

One way to find nearby cameras is to use DeFlock, an open-source, community-run project that maps automated license plate readers.

Local government records can also clarify the location of cameras purchased or operated by public agencies. The ACLU says that residents can search city council agendas, police department policies, contracts, purchasing records, and meeting minutes for terms such as “Flock Safety” or “automated license plate reader.”

What does a Flock camera look like?

Flock cameras can be powered by solar panels.

A typical Flock license plate reader looks like a small rectangular box mounted near the top of a narrow roadside pole.

Several installations are also equipped with a small solar panel mounted on the pole, allowing the camera to operate without a conventional connection to the electrical grid.

The camera is usually angled toward one or more traffic lanes to photograph the front or rear of passing vehicles.

Flock says its cameras can be found along road shoulders, in medians, near neighborhood entrances, and around parking lots.

Are Flock cameras constitutional?

The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable government searches and seizures. The law generally treats license plates and vehicles driven on public roads as information in the public domain.

“ALPR cameras sit at fixed and obvious locations and register still images of vehicles at that location and time. They do not follow a vehicle from origin to destination, cover only a small fraction of a city’s roads, and provide samples, not a seamless diary of one’s movements,” Flock said in a white paper published in November 2025.

It added that “the constitutional concern arises when technology stitches together a comprehensive portrait of someone’s movements over time that can reveal intimate and sensitive details. Fixed, point-in-time roadway observations occupy the other side of that line.”

Privacy and civil-liberties groups disagree. The ACLU and EFF say that networked cameras can collectively create a detailed and searchable record of where people travel, even if each camera captures only one location at a time.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the date of the data referenced in a post by Flock CEO Garrett Langley.

• Tom Holland and Zendaya recently married after years of keeping their relationship low-key.
• Outside of promo tours for “Spider-Man,” the couple rarely appears in public together.
• PR pros say discretion benefits the couple’s image, even if it’s not the most lucrative strategy.

If you look closely at a patch of skin on Zendaya’s ribcage, you’ll spy a tiny, discreet “T” tattooed in black ink. Her longtime partner, Tom Holland, has a similarly easy-to-miss “Z” tattoo tucked beneath his left arm.

The permanent tributes to each other’s initials go unseen at most events and red carpets, peeking out only in select moments — an almost too-perfect metaphor for Zendaya and Holland’s public-facing relationship.

Although Zendaya and Holland went Instagram-official in 2021, the exact timeline of their relationship is unknown. While many fans speculate the “Spider-Man” costars actually began dating years earlier, the couple’s prudent navigation of fame and their respective careers means there’s been precious little material to go on.

Outside their promotional duties as Peter Parker and his love interest, MJ, in the MCU film franchise — their latest movie, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” earned the biggest domestic box office debut in history — the actors rarely broadcast their relationship, on social media or otherwise. They have never walked a non-Marvel-related red carpet together, and fans can count on one hand how often they’ve kissed in sight of photographers.

Even when news broke last year that Zendaya and Holland were engaged, there was no official announcement from the couple, let alone a collection of Instagram-friendly floral proposal photos. Zendaya simply began wearing a diamond on her left-hand ring finger. The media rollout for their marriage was equally nonexistent, with Zendaya’s stylist, Law Roach, spilling the beans. Holland then confirmed the news to Esquire, gingerly and succinctly. When and where did they tie the knot? Who was invited? What did Zendaya wear? With this anti-PR power couple, we may never know (though AI-generated photos of the wedding went viral).

And yet, the lack of intimate details doesn’t cause fans to doubt that Zendaya and Holland are in love, or to cry “PR relationship.” In fact, the effect has been quite the opposite. With only subtle signs of their affection for each other displayed in public, their relationship feels effortless.

“It’s the way they hold hands. It’s the way they look at each other,” Mike Fahey, the founder and CEO of the PR agency Fahey Communications, told Business Insider, adding, “None of that is rehearsed.”

“The fans, the people at home, that’s what they relate to — that type of love,” he continued.

Indeed, the positive reaction to Zendaya and Holland’s top-secret wedding shows how careful breadcrumbing has endeared fans to the couple’s love story, even as they keep the meat and potatoes protected.

“It wasn’t a spectacle at Madison Square Garden,” Fahey said of the couple’s nuptials. “It’s like their love is their love and they show it outwardly in very subtle but beautiful ways.”

Of course, a certain level of secrecy can actually incite even more demand for attention. But with Zendaya and Holland, it’s not that fans have nothing to fawn over — it’s that the couple is giving just enough to signal there is a deeper, genuine relationship happening between them in private.

They exchange adoring glances, but they don’t pack on the PDA. They speak highly of each other in interviews, though often as a “best friend,” not a husband or wife. They don’t dismiss the topic of their relationship outright when asked about it, but they don’t invite additional questions.

Fahey called it “a masterclass in only giving people as much as they need.”

“Little gestures go so far, and I think that’s what social media has picked up on. You can really see their bond,” Fahey said. “We’re looking at a couple here that has insane upward momentum and could really do whatever they want from here.”

The less-lucrative road less traveled

It’s easy to juxtapose Zendaya and Holland’s privacy-first approach with the strategy employed by another power couple of the moment: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.

When Swift and Kelce went public with their relationship, they immediately began merging their businesses and leveraging each other’s fanbases to significant commercial gain (if not for Swift, then definitely for Kelce).

“Just look at Travis’ deal with his podcast. Not to say the Kelce name wasn’t strong before, but $100 million for a podcast wasn’t happening before Taylor Swift,” Fahey said.

By contrast, Zendaya and Holland have largely nurtured their careers as individuals. While they share the screen in the “Spider-Man” movies and cheer each other on from the sidelines, they’ve declined to leverage “Tomdaya” as an offscreen venture: there have been no joint brand deals, no shared magazine covers in nearly a decade. Meanwhile, Zendaya recently posed for the cover of Interview with her “The Drama” costar, Robert Pattinson. The work remains the focus.

“Tom and Zendaya could do whatever they wanted, and anything they touched would turn to platinum, not just gold. But instead, they’re choosing to do things in a quiet, deliberate way,” Fahey said. “They’re probably leaving tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars on the table by protecting their relationship and protecting their privacy.”

Juliana Martins, celebrity publicist and founder of Eleven11 Media Relations, agreed that while it would be naive to assume that Zendaya and Holland “lack PR strategy,” their particular strategy seems to deprioritize profit.

“I don’t think money is top of mind for them. They’re definitely not monetizing their relationship, but both of them are so successful on their own accord,” Martins said. “I truly do think that they’re comfortable with their income solely focused around their projects, individual endorsements, and brand deals, and that what they prioritize most with their relationship is keeping it sacred.”

Leaving money on the table? In show business? It’s rare, but not unheard of. And it has other benefits.

Both Fahey and Martins, who have years of PR experience spotting stunts and manufactured narratives, cited Zendaya and Holland as one of their favorite celebrity couples. To describe their relationship, they each used words like “organic,” “genuine,” “solid,” and “chic.” Money can’t buy that kind of reputation.

“If they wanted to make a lot of money, they would be, because they would turn this into a PR factory,” Fahey said. “It’s almost like two roads diverged in the woods. They’re choosing the path less traveled, and it is making all of the difference for their relationship and their image.”

• US presidents travel in a variety of secure vehicles, including planes, helicopters, and cars.
• He flies on Air Force One, a militarized Boeing 747, and occasionally a militarized Boeing 757.
• For shorter trips, presidents use Marine One or a secure limousine known as “The Beast.”

The president of the United States never has to sit in traffic or fight for the last space in a plane’s overhead bin.

With a fleet of planes, helicopters, and vehicles at the US president’s disposal, the leader of the free world travels in style.

While aesthetics are certainly a consideration when designing official planes or limousines, presidential transportation prioritizes safety and functionality.

Every plane, helicopter, or car also becomes a moving Oval Office with features that allow the president to lead the country and communicate securely while in transit.

Take a look at the modes of official transportation available to the US president.

Perhaps the president’s most famous mode of transportation, the best-known Air Force One is a militarized Boeing 747 designated VC-25A.

Air Force One is the call sign given to any US Air Force plane carrying a US president.

The first plane built specifically for use by the US president was the “Sacred Cow,” a Douglas VC-54C Skymaster used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt beginning in 1944. Since then, presidential aircraft have evolved with state-of-the-art technology to function as a “flying White House” with all the capabilities of the Oval Office and the Situation Room.

Today’s presidential plane, a modified Boeing 747-200B designated VC-25A, measures 231 feet long and features 4,000 square feet of floor space, including offices, rest areas, an executive stateroom with a full bathroom and dressing room, and a conference room.

It can hold 30 crew members and 71 passengers. Each VC-25A plane cost around $325 million.

The president also occasionally flies on a militarized Boeing 757 known as a C-32.

At 155 feet long, the C-32 is smaller than the VC-25A with room for 16 crew members and 45 passengers.

It usually functions as the vice president’s plane, but the president uses it to fly into and out of smaller airports that aren’t built to support the massive primary 747 aircraft.

Each C-32 cost around $145 million to produce, according to the Air Force.

In July, Trump flew for the first time on a new Air Force One jet gifted by Qatar, a Boeing 747-8 retrofitted as a VC-25B Bridge.

With Boeing running years behind schedule on delivering new 747-8 planes, President Donald Trump looked elsewhere in his efforts to upgrade the presidential fleet.

In May 2025, the Trump administration accepted a Boeing 747-8, a private business jet previously used by the Qatari royal family, saying he’d be “stupid” to turn down the gift. The White House said the plane would be “retrofitted to the highest standards” to serve as a new Air Force One.

Known as the VC-25B Bridge since it serves as an interim presidential aircraft, the plane is larger than the VC-25A, measuring 250 feet long, and about 20 years younger. The newer-generation jet can also fly faster and farther with a range of 8,900 miles at 660 miles per hour.

The luxurious jet features spacious interiors with lounges, offices, dining areas, and bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms.

The new plane is valued at around $400 million. In June 2025, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink told Congress that retrofitting it for presidential use would cost less than $400 million.

In July, a New York Times investigation identified $934 million had been transferred from a nuclear modernization program to a top-secret project, which the outlet reported could be used to upgrade Trump’s Air Force One. The Air Force declined to comment.

Trump flew on the VC-25B Bridge for the first time on July 1 to dedicate the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota. On July 8, Trump switched back to the old VC-25A Air Force One to fly back from a NATO summit in Turkey. He then boarded the VC-25B Bridge for the flight back to Joint Base Andrews.

The switch sparked questions about the new plane’s security and defensive capabilities, but at the time, Trump said it was so that US service members could see the plane.

Trump told reporters on July 19 that the VC-25B Bridge would soon be removed from service for a month to be “maxed out.”

There’s also the E-4B Nightwatch, nicknamed the “doomsday plane,” which is designed to survive nuclear war.

In the event of a national emergency, such as a nuclear attack, the E-4B can protect the president and other senior officials and serve as the US military’s command-and-control center.

A militarized version of a Boeing 747-200, the “doomsday plane” can refuel mid-flight to stay airborne for days at a time. It features thermal and nuclear shielding, as well as greater communication capabilities than regular Air Force One planes. Each E-4B cost $223.2 million to build.

Five Boeing 747-8 passenger jets acquired from Korean Air are being converted by the American aerospace company Sierra Nevada Corp. for the Air Force’s next-generation E-4C Survivable Airborne Operations Center program under a $13 billion contract.

Marine One’s ability to land and take off from the White House lawn makes it a popular choice for short trips.

Like Air Force One, any Marine Corps aircraft with the president on board uses the call sign Marine One.

Past helicopter models used as Marine One include the VH-60N White Hawk, which can fit 11 passengers, and the Sikorsky VH-3D Sea King, which can fit 14.

The president often flies shorter distances in Marine One to places like Joint Base Andrews and Camp David as a faster alternative to the presidential motorcade.

The helicopter’s interior space is soundproofed to allow the president and staff to speak at a normal volume.

A new Marine One model, a Sikorsky VH-92A Patriot, entered service in 2024.

The Marine Corps declared the VH-92A operational in 2021, but concerns that it kept scorching the White House lawn delayed its use by the president. Joe Biden took the first presidential flight aboard the model in August 2024.

The VH-92A was intended to fully replace the fleet of VH-60N and VH-3D Marine One helicopters by 2023, but the project has been delayed until 2030, The War Zone reported.

At 69 feet long, it can hold four crew members and 14 passengers.

Each VH-92A cost about $217 million, according to a June 2021 Government Accountability Office report. Trump is also overseeing construction of a new granite helipad on the White House‘s South Lawn, which he said would cost about $5 million to $6 million and be funded by Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin subsidiary.

The presidential limousine is affectionately known as “The Beast.”

Weighing 20,000 pounds, The Beast is designed to look like a Cadillac XT6 with the chassis of a Chevrolet Kodiak.

It is bulletproof, sealed against biochemical attacks, and stocked with a refrigerator containing the president’s blood type.

It travels with the US president domestically and abroad, and can seat up to seven people. The Beast reportedly cost around $1.5 million to build.

Since Trump is an avid golfer, the Secret Service also uses a secure vehicle nicknamed “Golf Force One” to protect the president on the course.

The presidential golf cart appears to be a Polaris Ranger XP utility task vehicle, or UTV. It was first spotted in July 2025 as part of Trump’s entourage while he was golfing at his Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland.

Polaris Ranger XP models start at $21,499 in 2026, and a Polaris XP 1000 Ranger UTV armor kit manufactured by Scaletta Armoring was previously listed on the US General Services Administration’s website for $188,922.92.

“The US Secret Service employs a variety of tools and resources to safeguard our protectees,” a Secret Service spokesperson told Business Insider in July 2025. “This vehicle is part of our presidential fleet of specialty vehicles. In order to maintain operational security, the Secret Service does not discuss the specific means and methods used to conduct our protective operations.”