Heigh-ho! Author here. I hope you don't mind if I have a few notes on your comment.

I don't believe I linked to any of my previous writing in this article, and I did put some detail in the footnotes about how NTIA, ICANN, and IANA are owned by or are under contract to US government agencies. It's not quite fair to call that a theory — the ownership and contracts of these organizations are public record. For example the fact that NTIA is owned by the Department of Commerce is literally the first thing on their website, where you can get plenty of other information on their role in the DNS system: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/

You're right — as I mentioned in the article the Internet per se is not owned by America, but the DNS system is and that's the gateway to the Internet for most folks. You don't need to control every DNS server in the world to control the DNS system — you only need the root zone. It would be really cool to see a "second Internet" crop up that uses an alternative DNS and/or addressing system. There probably already is one, but I daresay it's a tad unsavory.

Frankly I trust politicians about as far as I can throw them. I wouldn't want the world's most important computer network in the hands of a notoriously fickle, self-serving, and inefficient organization like the US government. As it happens my nation already built the current robust, fault-tolerant innovation — I am American — but that doesn't mean I have any faith in the political system. I don't credit the government with enough imagination and guile to do anything truly nasty with the Internet, but if that's the only thing stopping them then I think it's legitimate to have concerns for the ownership of the system.

As for the other obsolete nations, there are a fair few of them. If you have some juicy details about Tongo, I'd love to hear about them. I'm a nerd, so I find this kind of thing pretty interesting.