To use? No, most modern languages can abstract to a high level. But senior JS developers that don't understand even basic memory management are not going to have a good enough handle on what's going on under the hood to be helpful. I think is more to do with them not being remotely curious, which is a prerequisite to good engineering.

Agreed - for moderately big/moderately complex systems, there are plenty of problems that really need a moderate understanding of what the underlying runtime, operating system, network etc are actually doing.

Sure, I agree that they do. My point is they shouldn't

I disagree with this opinion. Treating computer hardware like perfectly abstractable magic leads to terrible outcomes.

Rust isn't just any programming language. It's specifically designed to have very low (even zero) overhead on top of what the hardware is capable of, and this by necessity exposes how computers work.

In theory a compiler could figure out all the low-level details for the programmer automagically based only on a high-level abstract program, but in practice such approach has never worked well enough, to the point that a "Sufficiently Smart Compiler" is a trope/joke among programming language designers.

device drivers are a counterexample

imagine Rust is being introduced as the first language to teach students.....

Nothing is wrong with that