Is SAFe the only way to scale agile?

A SAFe release train in its usual state

I have found recently that people who lead SAFe teams assume that criticising SAFe means that you are rejecting all scaling, release planning and architecture. As if the only alternative to SAFe is single-team 2-week sprint planning with no design. I find this bizarre. We in the agile community know the need to plan releases and scale to programs and organisations. We think there are plenty of better ways to scale than SAFe…