What Role Do Mining Pools Play in the Feasibility of a 51% Attack?

Mining pools aggregate the hash rate of many individual miners, increasing the probability of finding a block and distributing rewards more consistently. However, if a single mining pool grows to control over 51% of the network's hash rate, the pool operator could theoretically launch a 51% attack.

This centralizes the risk, as an attacker only needs to compromise or collude with the pool operator, rather than thousands of individual miners.