Um, no they don’t, at least not the way "CDN" is typically meant. They typically provide a third party domain the website includes stuff from.

Cloudflare also does that, but it’s not the issue here. The issue here is all the MITMing.

Unless Akamai and suchlike silently MITMs your visitors by pretending to be the original site too? in which case yes, fuck Akamai as well.

The modern internet WOULD, in fact, work without them, it just might be a little slower, and you know what? That'd be okay. We'd live.

-- Frost