I'll critique the language. Unsafe is a bad name. It doesn't mean "not safe" it means "cannot be verified by the compiler to be memory safe." Some things are inherently unsafe by that definition, including things necessary for software development. It may be better than other names, but frankly - it's too scary.

In particular, the implementation of data structures. Raw memory allocation, usage of pointers, low level concurrency primitives - none of that can be done without the programmer manually enforcing invariants.

But unsafe isn't wanton abandon. You still have to obey the type system and ownership rules.

As for the goal, it depends on the author. Some prioritize one over the other. In general the Rust community these days tries to optimize the balance of safety and speed with as few compromises as possible - which is fundamentally why the language exists.