I prefer C. If I want some more language sugar or safer constructs, I am finding Rust better. If you want "high performance, high reliability, small footprint, low energy consumption" it's pretty hard to beat assembly, but you lose portability to other architectures. Honestly, that's why I don't C go any where. However, I see C++ being superseded, by other languages eventually. Yet that's not going to happen quick because C++ does have a lot code written out there. Giving it a large historical inertia.
Stroustrup is effectively saying: if it needs to be fast and efficient then C++ is the choice. Historically I agree, I think it’s still valid in a lot of cases today, but for the future I think hardware speed and the efficiency of GC languages will supplant the importance of C++ for most of the core use cases for C++ today.