Well, when Rust came out I had only been programming in C and C++ for about 15, maybe 20 years, but I think that even then we generally used memory safety to refer to problems that can cause "type confusion". In any event, given that none of the languages mentioned here - C, C++, Zig, or Rust - prevent memory leaks, I don't think that the question of whether or not we include it under the umbrella of memory safety could offer insight on the interesting distinctions between these languages.
I think it is relevant exactly because Rust exceptionalism is based on sloppy arguments that are fallacious because they narrow down topics and definitions in some invalid way, i.e. only considered memory safety while ignoring safety in general, only considering a specific definition of memory safety, only considering the safe subset of Rust, only accepting language-level safety, etc. until at the end it looks that Rust is extremely different to other languages while it is just some incremental step.
I completely agree, but given that even in Java, which eliminates the memory leaks Rust doesn't, programs still have bugs and security vulnerabilities, I don't think it's about what is and isn't memory safety. Most of the software that runs the world has been written in memory-safe languages for a very long time. It's more about understanding the significance and role of memory safety. With that comes the insight that it isn't binary and, while important (out-of-bounds access in C and C++ is, as far as we know empirically, one of the leading causes of security vulnerabilities), eliminating it has both a finite benefit and a cost that need to be considered.
