Blockstream's perceived/claimed influence is mostly a relic of a prior drama period afaik. I don't think they directly employ/fund any of the Core maintainers anymore and only a few contributors. We have lots of non-profits that do this now as explained in this post: #1233827

Here's a visual of 2023 funding if that's easier:

I don't think claims of malicious influence were true when Blockstream was the main dev funder and I don't think it's true now. Whenever folks don't like what Core is doing they begin spinning narratives about the existence of a Deep Core (like a Deep State but for Bitcoin Core).

Regardless, Knots is a fork of Core kind of like humans are a fork of their parents. By virtue of inheritance, most of whatever you think influences Core also influences Knots. So, yes and no - Deep Core would have less direct influence over a fork, but the fork is still 98% a product of Deep Core.