> Another question in theory can Rust be faster than C? If all possible optimizations are applied.

Very likely not at this stage, and maybe not for years to come. But I'll take increased memory safety and elimination of entire class of bugs for 1-3% performance loss even on the most critical paths (with many actual wins for Rust in many other cases).

While I do get what huge battery life implications might 5% differences in decoders make, I believe the current political climate mandates we use the most secure code we can and sacrifice smidgen bits of performance here and there for it.

It was known for decades that at one point we'll have to roll up our sleeves and pay up the security tech debt.

Sorry for the slightly philosophical message but I've no desire to comment on the actual tech details here.