If they literally mean safety then perhaps Golang fits the bill but they said safety _like Rust_. They probably still want the control that Rust provides.
Honestly simplicity and having syntax to teach a compiler how to reason about all the lifetimes you need in a real program are at odds.
I love rust but I think it's fundamentally complex
For sure, and I think different people may understate or overstate its complexity. It's definitely worse than Go but it's not nearly a field of landmines like C++. I think it's quite feasible to learn the basics in a short period of time, but maybe that's just me. I guess we'll see how Vale and the others turn out in production.
GC
But Golang's GC is tweakable. As a compiled language using a GC, it and others aren't that slow. Often fast enough, for many use cases.