Even daemontools (0.76-8.1 Debian) is 3771 lines of C, much more than 1000. Sysvinit is much more code than daemontools; sysvinit 3.06 is 8407 lines of C and 3595 lines of sh, according to David A. Wheeler's 'SLOCCount'. systemd 252.39 is 549427 lines of C, 26257 lines of Python, 18735 lines of sh, etc., not even counting its dozen or so dependencies.
So you're correct that sysvinit is more than an order of magnitude smaller and simpler than systemd, and having all that code in your TCB is an express ticket to the bug-of-the-month club. But you're still underestimating sysvinit by an order of magnitude.
Bringing Treacherous Computing to Linux is, of course, generally a bad thing, and it's not a good idea to have the lead maintainer of the central component of your operating system employed by a notoriously unethical company whose main product is a competing operating system.
So you're correct that sysvinit is more than an order of magnitude smaller and simpler than systemd, and having all that code in your TCB is an express ticket to the bug-of-the-month club. But you're still underestimating sysvinit by an order of magnitude.
Bringing Treacherous Computing to Linux is, of course, generally a bad thing, and it's not a good idea to have the lead maintainer of the central component of your operating system employed by a notoriously unethical company whose main product is a competing operating system.