@mttaggart @mwl I don't think this is actually going to happen.
There's so much stuff relying on .io at this point that I won't be surprised if major DNS providers just sidestep ICAN and take matters into their own hands.
ICAN isn't omniscient and omnipotent, if the majority of the world decides that they shouldn't be in charge of DNS any more and that we'd rather use a different set of root servers, their power basically goes away.