It's subtle. Unsafe Rust is a superset of safe Rust; that is, all valid safe Rust code is valid unsafe Rust code.

  fn foo() {
      unsafe {
          let x = &5; // this is still going to get borrow checked
      }
  }

Since it's a superset, it gives you access to new tools, that don't interact with the borrow checker, rather than "turning the borrow checker off".

  fn foo() {
      unsafe {
          let x = *const 5; // this is not going to get borrow checked
      }
  }

(*const is not valid syntax: the way to not-borrow something is to coerce/cast it to an unsafe pointer within the statement, so that the borrow ends at the ;, e.g. give x an explicit raw pointer type in the first example.)

gah, i always mess this up, haha