Yes, any group can soft or hard fork. This group is the first group that has this much traction behind normalizing consensus-level behavioral gating for "safety". Like I said, if you do constrain at consensus, you normalize control at L1 and open the door for future parameterization under "safety" banners. A soft fork that prunes behaviors creates a focal point (maintainers + large clients + pools) that can be lobbied, sued, or regulated. The more "safety" is cited, the easier it is to extend the scope (AI-safety, biosecurity, financial integrity, carbon). Lawmakers don't need new statutes; they can simply point to "Bitcoin already excludes Y", and press for Z (e.g., "exclude sanctioned payload types", "restrict non-KYC script paths"). You've demonstrated precedent and capability. So I never said that any group can't soft or hard fork. I am writing about this group because the consensus changes they've proposed are backed by a lot of Bitcoiners and there are pros and cons to this soft fork. However, I don't think most understand the difference between consensus rules and policy rules.

Since it is and always has been possible, it's indifferent wich group does it, even without this proposal(wich I'm against at least without strong consensus) a nation state or other attacker could make a SF version that is more "safe" and convince other or have many attackers running his version. what will decide is economic actors and POW.