Same applies for .com/.net, except it's USA's politics. Which you may or may not consider more reliable. But yea, ccTLD domain hacks are pretty damn stupid.
Yea, but governance structure can be changed on a political whim. .io is efficiently governed as a gTLD now, even if it is a ccTLD. While .com/.net/.org are generic and governed by ICANN, the registry is VeriSign, a USA-based company, and ICE made it explicit already in 2010 they can seizure these any time they see fit. Back in 2010 it was mostly for genuine law-enforcement ends (whatever these ends justified the means is another story), but with what became of ICE recently, I would not bet on anything.