Note that "unsafe" in this context refers to memory safety. I am not making the claim that Go code which does not import unsafe or C is free of bugs; however, i

Note that "unsafe" in this context refers to memory safety. I am not making the claim that Go code which does not import unsafe or C is free of bugs; however, if you don't import unsafe or C anywhere in your application or dependencies (sans the stdlib) then it is memory safe (assuming no compiler or OS bugs compromise that guarantee.) That's just how Go is specified. The unsafe package in Go provides unsafe.Pointer, which allows you to convert between a pointer and integral type, essentially allowing you to make pointers of any type to any address, giving up type safety. Without it, Go pointers are safe, because the GC will never free memory that has live pointers, and you can't do math on Go pointers.