The problem is that HTML, Javascript, and CSS are the wrong "low-level" abstractions. They are high-level abstractions that various web development technologies like React work around. The problem is that they try to provide a standard that solves every problem; and the market generally rejects that standard so it tries to work around it.

The right thing would be for the browser to expose much lower-level abstractions. Webassembly is a step in the right direction, but it needs an API other than HTML and calling back to Javascript.