You can protect yourself, but many won't be aware of the situation until it's too late, and institutionally managed funds won't be able to change their rules in time to avoid holding these as part of the index funds they hold.

Many individuals can, but good luck reaching out and convincing the entire country that they should look into making changes to their retirement fund allocations without sounding like a kook.

There's maybe, at best, 1% of the country even aware that this might be a problem.

What should we be looking for?

I’m not sure I could. Even starting to research how to prevent being affected by these changes shows that there’s layers upon layers of systems that are being manipulated, and there are costs charged for moving the capital in my retirement account to other accounts.

Saying you as in any random person can protect themself from a group of dedicated experts who also have access to levers the common person can’t pull, is kind of not believable on its face.