Nah, 40 years ago this discussion already existed and it was between C and FORTRAN at the time. FORTRAN was often faster than C, precisely because of aliasing rules that Rust now benefits from as well: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/146159/is-fortran-easier-to-optimize-than-c-for-heavy-calculations

Btw, are these the Debian benchmarks you were referring to? Because I can see C and Rust trading blows with one another, but neither taking a consistent lead. Nothing that points to an undisputed performance lead surely. https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/rust-gcc.html

But I still agree with your premise that performance isn’t the deciding factor. Which means that other than legacy reasons, C (and C++) really doesn’t have much going for it anymore.