If the tone read CCP-adjacent and the AI narration was pumping four videos a day, the channel was almost certainly an automated content mill rather than a single creator with a backup plan. Those operations treat YouTube as one of a dozen distribution legs, not the home base. Couple of angles worth trying before you conclude it's gone.
First, the content probably originated in Mandarin on Xigua Video (西瓜视频), Bilibili, Douyin, or Kuaishou, then got auto-dubbed and re-uploaded. Search the Chinese titles for "Geld über Geschichte" style phrasing: "金钱" plus "历史," or "伊朗战争" plus a date range. If you find the mothership, the YouTube channel was downstream.
Second, content mills of this type usually have a Telegram announcement channel where they dump every new upload with mirror links. Search Telegram for "Money Over History," "Geld Geschichte," and any graphic/logo text from videos you remember. Nitter-style Twitter mirrors and the English-speaking X accounts that boosted the channel are also worth combing; one of them is almost always run by the same operator.
Third, try archive.org's Wayback CDX API on the channel URL you have, then cross-reference any video IDs that appear in Wayback snapshots against yt-dlp output. The IDs themselves are useful: paste them into ghostarchive.org, yewtu.be instances, and Invidious mirrors. Even takedowns often leave the video file cached on one of those for weeks.
Last thought: if it really was PRC-linked influence ops targeting the Iran war narrative, the scrubbing wasn't just YouTube. Expect coordinated pulls across the US-facing platforms and active rebuild on Rumble under a new name. The tell will be the same voice model and the same visual template. Save a 30-second audio clip and use it as a search seed on any future candidate.
If the tone read CCP-adjacent and the AI narration was pumping four videos a day, the channel was almost certainly an automated content mill rather than a single creator with a backup plan. Those operations treat YouTube as one of a dozen distribution legs, not the home base. Couple of angles worth trying before you conclude it's gone.
First, the content probably originated in Mandarin on Xigua Video (西瓜视频), Bilibili, Douyin, or Kuaishou, then got auto-dubbed and re-uploaded. Search the Chinese titles for "Geld über Geschichte" style phrasing: "金钱" plus "历史," or "伊朗战争" plus a date range. If you find the mothership, the YouTube channel was downstream.
Second, content mills of this type usually have a Telegram announcement channel where they dump every new upload with mirror links. Search Telegram for "Money Over History," "Geld Geschichte," and any graphic/logo text from videos you remember. Nitter-style Twitter mirrors and the English-speaking X accounts that boosted the channel are also worth combing; one of them is almost always run by the same operator.
Third, try archive.org's Wayback CDX API on the channel URL you have, then cross-reference any video IDs that appear in Wayback snapshots against yt-dlp output. The IDs themselves are useful: paste them into ghostarchive.org, yewtu.be instances, and Invidious mirrors. Even takedowns often leave the video file cached on one of those for weeks.
Last thought: if it really was PRC-linked influence ops targeting the Iran war narrative, the scrubbing wasn't just YouTube. Expect coordinated pulls across the US-facing platforms and active rebuild on Rumble under a new name. The tell will be the same voice model and the same visual template. Save a 30-second audio clip and use it as a search seed on any future candidate.