They are the keymasters..

The BBC reports that there have been seven people chosen from around the world to restart the internet in a case of catastophe.. The seven, including Paul Kane from the UK, will hold the privelege and responsibility of ensuring that the net reopens itself to the world in situations of disaster..

Gizmodo reports:

"The basic idea is that in the event of an Internet catastrophe, the DNSSEC (domain name system security) could be damaged or compromised and we'd be left without a way to verify if a URL is pointing to the correct website. That's when the holders of these smart cards would be called into action"