Pools is not their problem. It's miners who own the hash power. They can shut down the top 4 pools, and they'd have only achieved a temporary network interruption. And since they can't break into places and shut down mining farms, then they can't stop what's happening.
When miners are actually companies listed on the stock exchange it will be easier for a government to take over mining farm than pools.
Foundry is almost completely private, no hobby miners allowed, just people you can see their farms from the space station, all those will bend the knew faster than when stumbling over a rock.
Plus now even smaller pools or farms are immune, look in that list:
Binance pool - Heloc CZ, you want your passport back?
Mara pool - not even counting this one, hey will do the censorship even if not asked for
Luxor? - based in Seatle
SBI Crypto - it's owned by former Softbank Japan
And the halving will only make things worse.
The top 4 pools as we speak mine about 75% of the blocks. This means that even if 4 pools started censoring transactions based on federal orders, there would still be 1 in 4 blocks that would ignore all the censorship bullshit.
What happens when they decide to ignore any block containing a blacklisted transaction?
