They decided to accrue as much wealth and power as possible, at any cost, because they can only think in binaries, and in their mind when it all breaks, you then get to live with the power you amassed prior.

Anyone who's lived through a natural disaster and didn't have their guts hated by their neighbors will understand innately how fucking stupid an idea that is.

They also decided there are more people than they could control in the version of the after they imagine.

Thus, any and every action that accelerates both, is their idea of "winning", so they're going to take every single catastrophic decision to make it all worse from now on.