That's classic paranoid schizophrenia. The degree is no insulation against it.
The conspiracy theories are, well, irrelevant. He would have come up with ones on his own, had the world been devoid of them. I think the progression over the centuries has been witches, air looms and influencing machines, then microelectronics.
Even so, all the comparatively recent meming about secret overlord cabals of blood-drinking child abusers in this or that part of government has effectively turned paranoid schizophrenia into a communicable disease. That's a rather unexpected development.
There's nothing new about this stuff, and I'd hesitate before declaring it more widespread than it ever was before. The Satanic Panic was worse in this vein by far, and there was no internet.
The scary thing in the current age is the re-mainstreaming of political-party allied all-encompassing conspiracy theories, like Q/Pizzagate and Russiagate. America has become John Birchers vs. Joe McCarthyites while the environment is dying, infrastructure is crumbling, the wealth gap is absurd and constantly widening, and the vendors of arms and services are trying to provoke us into a nuclear war as a flowery garnish on our half-dozen forever wars.
I'm pretty sure reading a week's worth of papers from the 50s would show us a long list of grim things that were not _obviously_ going to be better.
(At least my country was in the middle of decolonization wars that are still leaving their trace today - so I doubt people were assuming "oh, sure, it's going to be fine in X years.")
But it did not really get "better" or "worse" in absolute terms.
The conspiracy theories are, well, irrelevant. He would have come up with ones on his own, had the world been devoid of them. I think the progression over the centuries has been witches, air looms and influencing machines, then microelectronics.