I think you're letting the reality distortion field get to your head. They're creating a safe mode for iPhones because a lot of features complex/intricate enough that they are perennial sources of vulnerabilities (and/or UX flaws that lead users to make unsafe decisions).

That is, they're turning features off for security. Something every IT department has been doing for decades. Windows supports this. Mac OS supports this. In fact, iOS was kind of notable in being so unconfigurable. The settings available in their MDM implementation were pitiful and didn't let admins disable many of these features.