[zetafunction]

Non-owning pointers are absolutely a problem if the object graph is large and complex enough. Many objects in Chromium have lifetimes managed by smart pointers, but unfortunately, that doesn't do anything to protect against code that mistakenly violates an invariant like "object X must always outlive Y due to these non-owning pointers". The problem is C++ turns a violation of lifetime invariants into undefined behavior rather than safely crashing.