This study investigated how cyberattacks could activate NATO Article 5 or EU Article 42.7 and their impact on the Dutch national response through the lens of digital sovereignty. By combining legal analysis, historical case studies with recently developed network-oriented computational methods, it showed that legal ambiguity and varying contexts, like political alignment and digital resilience, affect collective defense activation. The second-order adaptive network model developed includes three levels with two adaptation levels, translating complex political and legal concepts into dynamic variables. The undertaken What-If analysis indicated that greater digital sovereignty increases the activation threshold, reducing escalation likelihood. The findings emphasize the need to consider technical and political factors in assessing cyber escalation risks.