[snowsislander]

In a worst-case scenario, countries refusing to accept U.S. control could establish their own separate Domain Name System and thus fracture the Internet into more than one network. That means two users typing the same domain name could reach entirely different Web sites, depending on where they are.

Reliance on a single conceptual root is just a convention (though a better one than the old days where people ftp'd in the latest hosts.txt) in using the DNS protocol.

There's nothing that I find particularly worrisome about groups setting up alternate root servers serving alternate roots.

[Vision Thing]

In the old days, the latest hosts.txt file was small. Can you imagine a hosts.txt file today for a U.S.-only Internet? Or for a non-China Internet (which is the global internet minus China's)?

Nonetheless, it's good to know that the world can't screw up or take over the American-made Internet.