I don't understand what you mean by "country-ran." .us and .uk are ccTLDs, meaning they were created and recognized 2-3 decades ago by ICANN based on ISO country and Territory codes. ccTLSs are among the oldest continually operating TLDs. In fact, .io is a ccTLD.

But that doesn't make them "run by a country". .us is not run by the US government. It is run by Neustar. There is not something that says Neustar won't have poorly available/slow name servers, beyond that same statement that the .io people said.