It's the same hunting for narrative that usually happens.

He says something without meaningful context, and his base and others fill in the blanks in a race to make it profound. "He's actually playing 5D chess because..." And others ponder why he'd do something as reprehensible as trying to steal everything from an ally.

There's always boons to taking other people's shit; resources, access (NW Passage), infrastructure (energy), water, etc to give a couple examples.

Most of the time, it's because he's robbing someone else blind so needs another horror to enable and distract, and he got angry someone pointed out he's little more than a jerk.