I don’t think this is correct, Greg. ICANN is responsible for delegating TLDs to applicants. The criteria and procedures are different for ccTLDs than gTLDs but in both cases ICANN does more than passively update root zone records, it plays a role in deciding which party those root zone records point to.

The point is the powerlessness of ICANN to actually cause (rather than receive, verify and transmit) changes to the root.