https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Committee_on_the_ECH...
ECHELON was reported on several times in the decades before that, and in much more credible outlets than chemtrails have ever been.
That seems... unwise.
According to Paul Graham in his article How to Disagree an ad hominem attack is the second weakest form of disagreement, only a little better than calling someone mean names.
However, in the case of calling someone a conspiracy theorist, I would argue that it actually is an example of name calling as well. It is a negatively charged word. Name calling, according to Paul Graham, is the weakest form of disagreement.
From a logical fundamentals perspective, calling someone a conspiracy theorist has never held water. It can't hold water, unless talking about the character of a person, because it tries to attack the character of a person, rather than refuting their ideas.
Wikipedia, citing conspiracy theory as an example of ad hominem:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
It is an error of logic to support that the fact that an ad hominem attack doesn't hold weight means that a thing is right or wrong. The entire point of understanding fallacy is to realize that there is a disconnection between ground truth and any claims reached via their use.
In this particular case, people are talking about Elon being a conspiracy theorist, because he suspects there might be outside actors involved on the basis of known data exportation, known sabotage, and profit motives. These are examples of things tied directly to the question of whether Tesla is experiencing corporate espionage.
9/11 truthers, birthers, JFK assassination theorists, Illuminati/Satanist/New World Order types, pizzagaters, ZOG-believing antisemites, flat earthers, hollow earthers, etc. all have common rhetorical tactics and modes of argumentation that are distinctly "conspiracy theorist".
Conspiracy theories tend to be unfalsifiable claims without counter-explanations, while later-revealed conspiracies have tended to unravel based on credible counter-explanations from the beginning. Yes, the US government imported drugs into inner cities, just as the San Jose Mercury News spelled out, and it's a tragedy that the government then hounded that journalist to suicide before finally admitting it was all true.
In the meantime, hundreds or thousands of claims have been made that have no basis in reality, nothing other than "the world ought to make more sense than it does."
Our planet isn't flat because the US government tested drugs on poor black people without telling them. The latter was consistent with known facts all along, while the former is the result of Dunning-Kruger nonsense.
That oil companies and auto manufacturers are sabotaging Tesla, while competing rocket companies sabotaged SpaceX, is not impossible. It is, however, far less likely than that production is difficult, and that employees treated as Tesla employees are reported to be treated sometimes become disgruntled. So I won't be surprised if there does turn out to be evidence worth charging somebody with, but I think reason suggests that it's less likely than Musk is claiming.
Added to that corporate espionage and disgruntled employees are not opposites. One provides opportunity for the other.
For example, to me it's pretty clear that Putin is trying to destabilise the West. This is a theory about a conspiracy, but it's supported by plenty of evidence from multiple sources, and it makes sense, because Putin really hates NATO. But there's no credible evidence that the moon landing was a hoax, and the theory is insane, because the USSR would have had to be in on the hoax and help the US defeat them in the space race.
So what about Tesla? Are there people and organisations that have reason to feel threatened by Tesla? Is there evidence that they're trying to sabotage Tesla? And are these cases unconnected or is there actual coordination? (Otherwise it's still not a conspiracy.)