It seems much less likely that even a well-funded state actor could silently subvert enough root servers, which exist in many countries, to significantly compromise DNSSEC before alarms were raised, than that CAs are actively compromised or are just bad at being CAs, resulting in a breach like this (which happens approximately all the time). And with regard to state coercion, some CAs are in fact state-run, by states most people would consider grievously corrupt.

More to the point I would trust IANA and ICANN, faults and all, to not screw up the DNS/DNSSEC root, much more than I trust every CA in the default browser trust stores to get X.509 right all day, every day.

Again: you don't have to touch the root servers. The root servers are a red herring here. It's the TLD operators who exercise all the real control. IANA/ICANN will have nothing to do with the resulting situation.