I saw there was a HN thread for this yesterday. My thought is Rust may be better for the job, but what is the ecosystem for Rust? C++ has a huge ecosystem. For example, I am working on a C++ program that uses Eigen, CUDA, Ceres, and OpenCV ... I doubt I could even get started with this in Rust even if a mastered the language.
It's not a magic bullet — sometimes it's not practical — but Rust was built with interoperability with C/C++ in mind. Many Rust projects are built with C/C++ dependencies. Mozilla's use of Rust in Firefox is a good example of gradual adoption and interoperability.