And the parent's point is that there should be a distinction in level between Haskell and C, for example.
Then we need a finer grained taxonomy instead of the current model that is essentially: machine code;c/forth; literally everything else.
I mean that should be blindingly obvious anyway looking at the actual history of programming languages and CPUs but here we are in 2018 insisting that we must have exactly three categories with exactly the definitions of: assembly;C/forth; everything else.
The author's point is that what's happening in the transistors is relevant — not controlling it is what led to Spectre and heavy performance losses if you aren't smart about cache usage. Thinking of C as a "low-level language" makes it easier for people to overlook that fact.