RMS hadn't been involved with any technical contribution or project level decision making for a while. I would say people like Eli Zaretskii are far more important. While there is no shortage of people willing to hack on elisp, I get the feeling that people who can hack on the C core, and possessing deep knowledge of core subsystems is slowly dwindling.

But I do think Emacs will be fine. I don't think VSCode is an existential threat to Emacs in the same way Toyota is not a threat to Lamborghini. VSCode boasts impressive numbers, but it does so by consolidating in a target demography that was never a stronghold for Emacs to begin with - partly due to some level of indifference on its part. On the other hand, there are things Emacs is uniquely suited for, and for that reason it will continue to attract a particular type. I think in terms of absolute numbers Emacs userbase is still increasing, and I think falling numbers in terms of total percentage doesn't mean much for its survival.

I used to say that investing some time in becoming proficient with Emacs (the One True Editor!) or vim will deliver returns over a lifetime-spanning career. But Visual Studio Code has already joined them and it is a pretty sensible editor platform to learn.

Also totally subject for discussion: I suspect VS Code will see more innovation in years to come.