Framework fatigue has sparked renewed interest in Vanilla JavaScript and no-build setups, but frameworks still solve real architectural, performance, and security problems. Unbundled native ES modules shift critical safeguards from build time to runtime, expanding trust boundaries, weakening integrity guarantees, and reducing observability unless teams apply equivalent discipline. The real choice isn’t frameworks versus Vanilla JS—it’s using each intentionally, with security and maintainability treated as first-class concerns.