That seems like a crazy conspiracy theory to me. Do you have information on who is "spamming the network", and why they are willing to pay so much money to increase fees for everyone else?
It is rather difficult to pinpoint ones reasoning behind these attacks. If smart contracts were embraced on a large scale in the bitcoin ecosystem, one could argue the contract has gone awry. Even though smart contracts in bitcoin have been available for some time, they are not commonly used. The only logical explanation seems to be how someone or a group of people are purposefully creating a spam attack. The bigger question is how long this attack will last.
The only winners right now are the bitcoin miners. With more transaction fees being produced, miners make slightly more money. It appears someone will gladly let miners earn a lot more money, although no one knows for sure why that would be the case. We can only hope this attack relents sooner rather than later, so things can go back to normal.
More info about the current issues:
http://www.newsbtc.com/2017/03/04/new-spam-attacks-aim-slow-bitcoin-network/http://www.newsbtc.com/2017/03/20/appears-another-spam-attack-taking-place-bitcoin-network/https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5xi84f/this_address_is_spamming_the_network/