Do the words "no discernible reason" just mean something very different to you than they do to me? Because I've written somewhere in the vicinity of 100,000 words about the problems of DNSSEC over the last 20 years. My written DNSSEC critique predates HN itself.

This particular issue has nothing to do with "aligning authentication with the name hierarchy". The exact same thing that happened to EMudhra could happen to any TLD operator. The difference is that we have essentially no recourse when that happens, and far less ability to detect malfeasance.