I think its a control vs safety trade off. Zig forces explicit control over memory with some tools for safety. Rust forces safety with some tools for control. I only have hobbyist level experience with these languages. I find both enjoyable and I hope Zig continues to mature.

A much better source on Zig vs Rust would be Alex Kladov [0], one of the authors of TigerBeetle [1], which is one of the best Zig code bases I have seen.

[0] https://matklad.github.io/2023/03/26/zig-and-rust.html

[1] https://github.com/tigerbeetle/tigerbeetle