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.
It would cause chaos, yes, like other stupid things he’s done.
But in addition to the chaos, people would spin up solutions, and as things settled down and everyone got back online again, the result would be a decentralized internet.
So it’s sort of the same as wishing for a civil war, or wishing against one: Either way, the result might end up with things in a much better state, although the pain would be real in the meantime. (and lives lost in the case of civil war - and in both cases, not guaranteed to be better, although if things got to that point, they probably would end up being better).
Don’t think I’m wishing he’ll do it, mind. But if he does stupid things… that will be the result.