I think that is Eric's facetious term for what Universities are (a play on the military/industrial complex) but the main problem he points to is the inventivisation through market forces to not release non-monitisable research and that the best researchers don't teach because they are more value to the University generating grant money and basically being salespeople.

The not publishing research was interesting in that holding research in-house, making predictions, getting grants to research those predictions and then using the original unpublished discovery as the basis for the whole lot makes a lot more money.

As I understand it the DISC was a bit more diffuse and while it had tendrils in Universities, it didn't stop there. But yes, that was the main thrust of the DISC in the discussions.

Yes, the perverse incentives of the market play havoc with the spirit of the process of science. Which seems to be the source of the brain drain, in as much as talent leaves the university for the market instead of staying and teaching more talent.

It was interesting to listen to Bret in a podcast talking about whether it was a conspiracy of silence and in describing it as an emergent phenomena rather than being planned he was very much reading from Assange's manifesto on how they form and operate and the need for open government.