That looks more like a very short pdf with a white background than a 'whitepaper'.
Wikipedia says
> In business, a white paper is closer [than the government meaning of a policy document] to a form of marketing presentation, a tool meant to persuade customers and partners and promote a product or viewpoint.
I do think that some data would be good, but at the same time, the kind of data that's relevant here is really hard to get in any concrete terms, so might actually be harmful.
> a "paper" of any sort
Remember that this isn't a paper of just any sort: it's a whitepaper. So it has a specific audience: CTOs, VPs, and other technical management types. Audience is important for what you have to include in any work.
That said, I will happily concede that I have no idea who the target audience is for the whitepapers and probably don't know the accepted industry definition of a whitepaper. However, I'm very happy to see Rust flourish either way.