What would it look like if you were a staff software engineer whose job description didn't include theoretical work, but whose output consisted almost entirely of theoretical work?
That's not an issue of losing political battles, that's an issue of you getting fired very rapidly.
This advice is entirely premised on the idea that you can choose to do theoretical work if you want to, but that it will be a bad idea.
> New VP can make promises of future, theoretical riches that you can’t compete with
Why is theoretical work advantageous to the VP when he does it but disadvantageous to you when you do it?