On the contrary, Mary Poppendieck has a wonderful presentation she gave on how the Empire State Building was built in record time by literally doing it as a more agile-style construction. https://chrisgagne.com/1255/mary-poppendiecks-the-tyranny-of...
Likewise, American manufacturers by WWII had already gotten very good at building complicated machinery based on relatively light levels of blueprints and documentation, with the detail-level designs being added to the drawings used on the factory floor.
In many ways we have to blame the introduction of computerized project management for waterfall... it simply wouldn't have been workable before that to even attempt a real waterfall method for projects.
> Kanban is a core but small part of TPS, it can't be said to be pro or against safety.
The poster's point is that it's not obviously defective from that standpoint, despite criticisms that imply that it is.
I don't blame you for coming to the conclusion you have, but you'd do well to signpost when you suspect something is true vs have reason and evidence that something is true.