Yeah I suppose the prevent part came from the Browser/CA forum giving the CA that did it the death penalty like they did for Kazakhstan's CA in 2015 but if the men with guns point them at executives of browser providers and say "trust this CA or else" then CT is more of a cosmetic system than anything else.

[delayed]

Do the executives implement program features?

The most striking thing about these types of conspiracy theories is people seem to completely forget that whoever you imagine you can threaten generally doesn't have the ability to do the thing you want them to do: they'd have to delegate it.