https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Gumilev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnogenesis
People critique him on non important parts of theory, but the main idea is excellent.
Idea is, few percents of people have from nature wish to change world, Gumilev named them passionaries.
And unfortunately, ONLY these people have ambitions, want to make money and searching some endeavor.
Passion is not totally unconnected to smartness, but if some person is smart, but without passion, he will not use his brain to grow. I seen huge number of smart people, who spent their talent to just avoid work.
So, what I want to say, if you see some person looking dude, this is not evidence, he could just imitate this, to more easy get joyful life.
And the second important thing - sometimes career of person powered by some his relative, or friend, or just some manipulating person, who constantly pushed him, and even more, this pushing person could be smarter than his object(S). (Yes, many pushing persons push on several persons, not on one person).
Sure, sometimes, people sacrifice their life, to help their relatives or loved, for example to got out from poverty, but I think, in Western countries you don't need to do such sacrifice, their social system and economy are good enough, so who don't want to be in poverty, will not be.
So short answer - now you would find smart person literally everywhere, you just need to figure out, he is smart.