In C and C++ you have to treat everything as unsafe, because you have neither a GC nor a compiler to help tell you when you have accidentally violated some memo

In C and C++ you have to treat everything as unsafe, because you have neither a GC nor a compiler to help tell you when you have accidentally violated some memory management invariant that some API was depending on. Rust's type system gives you the tools to define those safe APIs and have them checked by the compiler, even if you need to do some unsafe shenanigans under the hood.