Officially it's called the Upper Intake Silencer in the FSM... What does it do? It has a hose connecting it to the intake on one end and another hose connecting it to a vacuum hardline. Can I pull it and just run a straight hose?

This is different than the oft covered ISR mod... Already has been taken care of

 

search ISR mod

 

Its the PAIR silencer, You can remove it and run the hose straight across or as some do eliminate it and put a filter on the pipe coming out font of the intake manifold.
This is noisy though.