But you did the same thing when, on the spectrum that ranges from C to ATS, with Zig, Rust, and Java somewhere in the middle (though all closer to C than to ATS), you declared the exact compromise that Rust makes "table stakes"! [1]
Zig improves on C's memory safety when it comes to spatial safety, possibly the more impactful kind, so it, too, could be part of the "we're all trying to improve memory safety", yet you exclude it.
You're trying to draw some hard line that passes exactly between Rust and Zig on the C to ATS spectrum, and I'm trying to say that that line isn't there (your attempt at a definition of delineating safe and unsafe code also applies to C). Obviously, C, Zig, Rust, Java, and ATS all make very different tradeoffs, all of which may be more or less attractive to different people and in different circumstances, but there is no sharp line, at least not one that is meaningful enough to be "table stakes". Your personal inclinations place a premium on the things Rust offers and Zig doesn't while mine are the opposite, but I make no claim to universality.
I'm happy to accept that not everyone shares my aesthetics and can understand why some people prefer Rust, but those claims to or hints at universality annoy me (as they did when they were made by Haskellers, and I actually find Haskell's aesthetics quite pleasing), as they are simply unsupported. I've spent a lot of time studying formal methods and software correctness in general (https://pron.github.io) and if there's one thing we know in that field is that things are never that simple (and, bringing this back to this posts topic, even something like incremental compilation can contribute to program correctness).
(Now, you may argue that you're only talking about "memory safety" and not correctness in general, but what gives memory safety value is that violations are causes of many dangerous vulnerabilities; but once, say, Java eliminates all of them, 100% of bugs/vulnerability - which are still numerous - will be caused by other problems, all potentially avoidable with ATS, so why isn't ATS table stakes? Of course, the answer is cost, but all the languages on the spectrum differ in their costs.)
[1]: I assume that you meant Rust's compromise, because you implied that Zig doesn't pass that bar but Rust does.