The kernel should be considered a tier above root, they shouldn't be considered the same level.
a) Root can be constrained by the kernel via LSM - you can run a program as root and it could be limited to very little given the current set of tools we have.
b) These days unprivileged users can be "root" in their own namespaces, so what "root" is means something very different
a) Root can be constrained by the kernel via LSM - you can run a program as root and it could be limited to very little given the current set of tools we have.
b) These days unprivileged users can be "root" in their own namespaces, so what "root" is means something very different