Well maybe the USA shouldn't get those top level TLDs? (Eg .gov or .mil or .edu). What's wrong with them having to use a second level domain like ".us.gov"?
It's been this way for 40 years. Are you a taxpayer? I'd rather not pay for any such retrofit. Furthermore, what makes you think that typos won't be made with any different domain name? Why would a fake hypothetical improvement of the situation drive a massive rewrite of millions of lines of code, server configurations, TLS certificates, specification documents...?
You can't set up a redirect, because if you leave a redirect in place, then people can send email to the original domain, and we're back where we started with the Mali misdirections. That's what the article is about.
I'm pretty sure the GP's point was that the US shouldn't have .gov/.mil etc, every country essentially has a form of government and military — And besides .gov.us would be more explicit.
The USA gets those top level TLDs because that's who created the Internet in the first place. It's an outgrowth of a US military project called ARPANET.
It's incredibly embarrassing if they're not using any kind of encryption for this.