I wish memory safety skepticism was nothing more than a rhetorical strawman. It's not hard to find prominent people who think differently though. Take Herb Sutter for example, who argues that "memory safety" as defined in this article is an extreme goal and we should instead focus on a more achievable 95% safety instead to spend the remaining effort on other types of safety.
I can also point to more extreme skeptics like Dan O'dowd, who argue that memory safety is just about getting gud and you don't actually need language affordances.
Discussions about this topic would be a lot less heated if everyone was on the same page to start. They're not. It's taken advocates years of effort to get to the point where we can start talking about memory safety without immediate negative reactions and that process is still ongoing.
I can also point to more extreme skeptics like Dan O'dowd, who argue that memory safety is just about getting gud and you don't actually need language affordances.
Discussions about this topic would be a lot less heated if everyone was on the same page to start. They're not. It's taken advocates years of effort to get to the point where we can start talking about memory safety without immediate negative reactions and that process is still ongoing.