00:00What if I told you the entire internet has a master key, and it's split between 14 people?
00:07It's real. It's called the DNSSE root key ceremony. Here's how it works.
00:13The internet needs to know that Google.com is really Google.com.
00:18That trust comes from one master key held by ICANN.
00:22They didn't give it to one person. They split it into seven smart cards.
00:26Seven cards are given to seven people, and seven backup cards are given to seven more.
00:32No single person can restart the internet.
00:35To use the key, at least three of the seven have to physically fly to a secure vault.
00:41One vault is in El Segundo, California. The other is in Culpeper, Virginia.
00:45They go inside a Faraday cage with no internet, cameras everywhere, witnesses watching every move,
00:52and they combine their keys to sign the root of the internet.
00:56If the internet ever truly breaks, if hackers poison the root,
01:01these 14 people have to meet in person to save it.
01:05The internet feels digital, but its safety is still physical.
