Isn't modern C pretty much Rust?
On the other hand, pretty much every kernel has a C API.
My comment also isn't really a comment about rust. It's about a common misconception that the unix/linux kernel somehow talks in "C".
Libc talks in C, most of the other libraries talking for interfacing with the kernel talk in C. The kernel speaks it's own language that has no special relation to C at all.
I like rust. I think it may be able to obsolete many/most uses of C some day. But I will concede that folks go overboard w this sometimes.
Agreed with the commenter elsewhere in this thread that Zig seems like a more reasonable contender for a modernized descendant of C.
Rust was designed by C++ programmers, to replace code that was previously written in C++. The concept that most guides its design is the idea of "zero cost abstractions", which a very C++ thing as well. ML doesn't mind if abstractions have a cost, while C is a smaller and more spartan language.
Rust's default behavior of ignoring integer overflows when not in debug mode -to put an example-, put it very close to C.