It’s prioritizing material wealth above other pursuits.
Not only in their own lives, but as the primary measure of success.
One side effect of this is that they stop investing effort in things that don’t generate material wealth.
Personally, I think that tends to turn people into dicks (non-transaction friendships are valuable to me), but they do them.
I agree -- it is surprising how many high achieving people have such poor understanding of how the world/society/countries work. It's almost like our education system's specificity hasn't done a good job on civics broadly.