I wouldn't say it definitely owns that niche, yet, until there is empirical evidence of how using Rust correlates to safer software. Until then, I think it's a hope founded on a substantive argument (ie. the borrow checker) that is still at risk of not achieving its goals.
The Android team posted something on that topic about 6 months ago [0, HN discussion at 1].
One potentially relevant highlight:
> To date, there have been zero memory safety vulnerabilities discovered in Android’s Rust code.
> Historical vulnerability density is greater than 1/kLOC (1 vulnerability per thousand lines of code) in many of Android’s C/C++ components (e.g. media, Bluetooth, NFC, etc). Based on this historical vulnerability density, it’s likely that using Rust has already prevented hundreds of vulnerabilities from reaching production.
The post has more details, and I think the entire thing is worth a read.
[0]: https://security.googleblog.com/2022/12/memory-safe-language...
In any case, Rust is unlikely to fail because it is the only viable option in its niche (safe systems programming language that can replace C++ everywhere), and has gotten a large amount of investment from major corporations.