Why: so your site can’t be taken down by the USA.
At least one .org website that I know of has been shut down because the USA pressured the US organisation that controls the .org domain into doing so.
They could repeat this at will for quite a number of sites.
An immediate step to prevent this possibility, if you run a website, is to register a domain that is controled outside the US.
I have not found one article that just lists them all, and who controls them, but most TLDs have their own wikipedia article, e.g. .org (US controled), .eu (not US controled, yay) etc.
Ultimately ICANN controls all of this, and that’s a US orga too, and Trump could bully them into doing shit, too. But the people who know about these things don’t seem to think that’s a likely threat right now. Also ICANN seems to defer a lot of tasks to exactly these TLD orgas. After all the internet still is (somewhat) decentralized.
Context
https://web.archive.org/web/20260829204913/https://www.inventati.org/campaign/press
Further reading
https://blog.apnic.net/2023/01/13/who-controls-the-internet/
https://netmeister.org/blog/tlds.html
List of all most TLDs created with this script.
who’s to say these supranational organizations won’t impose their own requirements? let alone stand for a free and open internet?
who’s to say they will propagate to (self-purported) external entities at all?
Consider a catastrophic breakdown of the root system caused by a geopolitical incident. I think you will find that as the situation changes so too will the postures and standpoints of these supranational organizations and therefore the digital landscape, and that which you have previously held effectively impossible can very rapidly become not just a possibility but a likelihood.