Fabricated image shared as The Economist cover saying 'nuclear war is inevitable'

What is the claim?

A fake cover image of The Economist with the text "Nuclear war is inevitable" above an illustration of Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden playing chess is viral. Archive links for such posts can be seen here and here.

Screenshot of the viral social media posts. (Source: X/Facebook/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, the viral image has been fabricated and is not a genuine cover published by The Economist.

What are the facts?

We found no such edition published by The Economist on their website or social media accounts. No such cover is recorded in the archives of the Economist weekly editions.

Further, we found the viral image has several inconsistencies when compared to the original layout of Economist magazine covers. First, the headlines seen at the top of a genuine cover are separated by neat lines, which is missing in the viral cover. These demarcation lines can be seen in all covers from October 2018; they were not present in covers before that. Next, the viral cover does not carry a date for the edition, present on every genuine cover published by The Economist.

Comparison of the viral fake cover (left) with a genuine cover published by The Economist (right). (Source: Website/X/Modified by Logically Facts)

Images of Biden and Putin

Through a reverse image search, we found the image of Biden and Putin playing chess on DeviantArt account with the username "carts," the page of an illustrator named Robert Carter. It was captioned, "End Game 2.0' - a quick revised version of my 2017 illustration End Game with Kim Jong Un and Trump. Let's hope and pray it doesn't come to this." The image does not carry the masthead of The Economist, the text about nuclear war, or any of the smaller headlines.

The same account has previously published similar images of politicians playing chess, such as an illustration of North Korea Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and former U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as images of Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both with a nuclear warhead hanging over their heads.

We also found the same image of Trump and Kim on Carter's Instagram page. The artist posted (archived here) the image of the two leaders on September 21, 2017, saying, "'End Game' New cover illustration for New Scientist magazine." Another similar image (archived here) of Kim and Biden playing chess, posted by Carter on September 1, 2023, was captioned "'End Game III' - another revised version of my 2017 illustration." 

Logically Facts contacted The Economist for comment on the viral cover. Confirming that it is fake, they said, "The Economist never published that cover."

The verdict

The image of a cover edition purportedly of The Economist showing Putin and Biden playing chess, stating that "nuclear war is inevitable" is fake.