How Do Pooled Mining Operations Affect the Difficulty of Launching a 51% Attack?

Mining pools aggregate the hash power of many individual miners, significantly centralizing the network's total hash rate. If a few large pools collectively control over 51% of the network, an attacker could theoretically compromise the network by coercing or compromising the leadership of those pools, rather than needing to acquire all the hardware themselves.

This centralization makes coordinating a 51% attack easier and poses a systemic risk, even for relatively high-hash-rate coins, if pool ownership is concentrated.