We have two covers this week. In most regions our cover considers how countries compete for highly skilled migrants, from scientists and doctors to bankers and entrepreneurs. Our cover in Asia looks at new nuclear rivalries. America must reassure its allies that it can still protect them and, unfortunately, it will have to build more weapons.

We had thought of calling the first cover the “war for talent”, so our designers came up with some martial images. One idea was bombs made of money, suggesting a battle fought with lucrative job offers. Another was of soldiers raising a $100-bill flag, in a pastiche of the famous photograph of US marines during the battle of Iwo Jima. Both images were arresting, but neither visual metaphor quite worked. Delivering money on a bomb would have obvious practical drawbacks. And countries that win a “war for talent” do not end up standing on ruins. Also, our other cover package is about nuclear deterrence, and we didn’t want two war-themed cover images. 

Rather than an image of battle, how about one suggesting ways of enticing the excellent? A fish hook baited with money looked striking—though unlike talented migrants, fish do not benefit from being hooked. A mortarboard with a carrot tassel was lovely—the orange stood out pleasingly from the black and the overall effect was upbeat. 

But we wanted more of a sense of action. High-flyers tend to arrive in the way their name implies, so we played around with pictures of airports. On the left, an emphatically huge welcome mat in the middle of the runway. On the right, a plane landing on a red carpet. Both ideas captured nicely the idea of countries doing their utmost to attract top talent. We decided not to allude to the other side of the story—that many governments sabotage their own talent-recruitment efforts with pointless red tape and an overbearing security apparatus. A cover image needs to be simple. 

And it is good to have a human being in the picture. We liked this image of a new hire receiving a red-carpet welcome. The mortarboard hints at his brains. The clear path ahead of him suggests a host country that has tried to make work visas quick and hassle-free to obtain, at least for the migrants it most wants. We worked this up into a cover, removing the crowd in the background to sharpen the focus on our talented traveller, now a woman. We tried some straightforward headlines before settling on a playful pun.

Our other cover story was much grimmer. After the cold war, nuclear arsenals shrank dramatically, but now they are growing again. And the bipolar US-Soviet rivalry has been replaced by something more complicated and potentially unstable. More states have the bomb or are close to building one. Rogues such as Russia, North Korea and Iran all share military technology. Meanwhile, America’s allies are less confident in the reliability of its nuclear umbrella. A new nuclear arms race is afoot. 

To convey the notion that one country’s actions affect another—if Iran gets the bomb, Saudi Arabia may want one, too—we tried an image of missiles as dominoes. The effect was slick but perhaps too scary, hinting at a chain reaction leading to armageddon. An alternative was to show missiles in their siloes, pointing upwards. This was neat but not grabby enough. 
 

We experimented with images with more tension. This house-of-cards design on the left evokes the complexity of nuclear geopolitics, the precariousness of deterrence and the possibility of disaster. The design on the right was intended to suggest that nuclear weapons are a last resort, but this felt wrong. One does not reach for nukes in an emergency. One brandishes them to deter others from starting a war in the first place. 

It was a tricky balance to strike: we wanted a cover that was alarming but not alarmist. A hedgehog-like cluster of missiles was too apocalyptic—we are not predicting a nuclear war, but a troubling increase in nuclear tensions. An artful display of open silo hatches could be read as apocalyptic, too: some readers might think the missiles have all been fired. And there was a completely different objection to this image: the silo hatches look a bit too much like toilets. 

So we opted for an umbrella. An early design turned the handle into a question mark, hinting at the known unknowns of nuclear geopolitics, such as “what is the other side thinking?” But the best one simply depicted the American nuclear umbrella fraying a little. It still protects allies, but many fear that America may be less capable and less willing to extend that protection in the future. Our final cover warns of the new threats; inside, our defence editor and others suggest how to confront them.