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You could also run the internet on smoke signals but nobody does it

If you think losing DNS root servers means that NK would have to use smoke signals then I think you don't understand how the internet works frankly. If you blocked your own computers access to the DNS root servers right now you probably wouldn't even notice the difference

smoke signals is a non-standard extension. however over avian carrier has its own rfc and is entirely legit:

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2549.html

+1, One cab likely also presume that especially DNS at the root level is already handled locally for NK. They reportedly have their own intranet so presumably they also have common services like DNS hosted their.

Of course but the contention is that Internet infrastructure, of which DNS is a fairly indicative example, is controlled by US entities.

It’s not, but it mostly is, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of other centralised components — hardware, cables, numbering, protocols — were similarly organized.

just edit /etc/hosts or run your own bind, and point dns to 127.0.0.1, no DNS root server needed!