CN coins need a hard fork to change the algo or the CN algo will gonna die for gpu mining.
I agree that bitmain wants to compromize the main feature of crypto currencies by centralizing the power.
It's an even bigger nail in the coffin of CPU mining, since cn is one of the only profitable algos left there.
But either way, yes. If the ASICs can keep up with forks, then they will own the algo. But there is also the benefit of a saturated network, the available hash power means that a coin vying for the POS market (like etn) may benefit from the support of ASICs, at least for a while, so they may not WANT to fork (xmr will, of course).