Where are the root servers and who controls them?
Most seem to be in the United States.
There is a map on the article I linked above showing some of the 13 root servers. They are labeled A to M.
A list of the organizations that manage the servers is here:
http://www.iana.org/domains/root/servers
This complicates the answer to your question:
(from https://www.apnic.net/community/support/root-servers)
The 13 root nameservers each have an identifying letter, from A-M. However, while only 13 names are used for the root namesevers, there are many more physical servers. Some exist in only one instance while others, such as C, F, I, J, K, L, and M servers all exist in multiple locations on different continents. These duplicates use anycast address announcements to provide a completely decentralized service.Having multiple servers distributed around the world provides high performance DNS lookup independent of the user's location as the request does not have to be dealt with by a single remote instance of the nameserver.