In my mind FORTRAN and COBOL are better languages than C/C++. If people really cared about performance they'd write code in some kind of macro assembler rather than have their CPU performing meaningless activity to keep up C/C++ calling conventions. (This is particularly shocking in the case of AVR-8 code for the Arduino where a program that could keep almost all its states in the rather large register file is moving the stack pointer around for no real reason.)

Mostly they want to keep using their legacy libraries and that is the whole reason why "safe" C/C++ is an oxymoron. So long as you maintain backwards compatibility with dangerous libraries and people keep using dangerous libraries than even simple programs that they write are dangerous.

Really the NSA should take one of those backdoors they are hiding and trash every C compiler on the planet.