Oh I'm sure bad acting does occur. That is not the question at hand.

The question at hand is: Is a recommendation to use memory-safe programming languages evidence that those languages are less safe than we previously thought?

There are two competing notions:

A. This being announced now is evidence that the NSA has recently succeeded in finding a way to subvert the security guarantees of rust.

B. This being announced now is evidence that the good actors (or actors who want to appear good) in the NSA have finally gotten through the red tape to do what is nominally their jobs.