Also, that article is wild!
In the future, we'll have a coup in some country and it will cause web chaos just from the TLD issue. (I've seen first-hand how some countries handle their ccTLDs...)
All two-letter TLDs are. Now that you know the pattern, you'll be able to identify all the other ccTLDs as well.
Lots of islands, lots of of countries with spotty international recognition, a couple countries that no longer exist (like the Soviet Union), and a couple "regions" (EU, Antarctic)
If there is some political issue and say .ai domains are taken over, what's stopping IANA from just taking over that TLD and moving the zone to some other entity? Most domains there are owned by international business and some IANA members might want to keep them running.
There have been a few disputes around certain ccTLDs, in the end it's a mixture of political and commercial interests that need ad-hoc mediation in most cases.